Project: Guardian
by Elisabeth Hill
Summary: AU. When Kozmotis Pitchiner is declared a failed experiment, the enigmatic Mr. Moon saves him, planning to use Kozmotis to help him bring down the project that produced the supersoldier Guardians and destroyed countless lives. But Kozmotis has his own plans, namely rescuing his daughter before she suffers his fate. If the introduction of a new Guardian doesn't complicate things...
1. Chapter 1

"Subject: Pitch Black. Male, forty-six years old, seventy-seven inches tall, weighing eighty-three point five kilograms, received a five-hundred-milligram initial injection, has developed advanced tenebrakinesis and negatively-oriented empathic ability."

There's a voice, cool and female and emotionless, babbling away somewhere above him. The room smells of disinfectant and dread and the lingering metallic traces of blood.

"Subject has consistently rejected personality conditioning and, as of now, is officially designated a failure."

Kozmotis blinks open his eyes, has to shut them again. A brilliant halogen light hangs directly above him, and brightly-coloured afterimages dance across the insides of his eyelids.

"It is recommended that no future subjects be drawn from high-ranking military positions. Lower-ranking positions are, of course, still acceptable."

There's a wet, sticky cough, and another voice, this one male and deep and dismissive, says, "I've got no use for an uncooperative failure. Have it neutralized."

"Yes, sir," the female voice replies.

Kozmotis has neutralized enough hostiles in his day to know that this does _not_ bode well. Whenever someone starts using that kind of language, it means that someone else is going to die. He moves to sit up, but meets resistance. He's tied to the bed, strapped down with fleece-lined restraints like something out of _One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest_.

He forces himself to open his eyes, avoiding looking directly at the blinding circle of the halogen lamp in order to see who else is in the room with him, what they're doing, what opportunities might be offered for escape. It's too bright in here for proper shadow, the whole room gleaming antiseptic white and stainless steel like a hospital operating room. Like in a hospital operating room, the people gathered around the bed are masked and gowned, except for three – a bored, mousy-looking woman in nondescript business clothes, a man in a tailored black suit which nevertheless hangs awkwardly on his powerful frame, and a small, round man, who only comes up to the woman's shoulder, dressed all in white and bald as a cue ball. No – that's not right, there's a single lock of platinum-blonde hair curling over his forehead. A peculiar fashion statement, to be sure, but not important. Kozmotis returns to scanning the room.

There's only one door, a sliding door that appears to lead out into an airlock. Locked steel cabinets line one wall, a stainless-steel industrial-sized sink set into the counter. No windows, white-washed cinderblock walls, and the ceiling is low. He must be underground. The vents along the top of the wall are too small for a cat to get through, much less a person.

There's a large grate in the very centre of the white tile floor, and the grout around it is stained a rusty brownish-red.

He swallows down the bile that rises in his throat at the sight. He's seen this kind of setup before, heard the screams that come out of this kind of room. It's part of the reason he joined the military, to help bring down authorities that spread terror and thrive on pain. He won't deny that he's killed, he's done things he'd never tell his daughter about, but this kind of cold, clinical, bureaucratic approach to atrocity is something he's never been able to stomach. He'd do anything to stop the monsters who commit these crimes, who take away people's humanity before they take their lives. And he has seen enough to know what _anything_ really means.

The thought that now it's happening here, to his own people, and he's powerless to stop it, hurts worse than any torture ever could.

The man in the black suit sniffs, sounding more like he's got a cold than the dismissive noise he obviously meant it to be. "And would someone _please_ sedate that or something? It's creepy, having those eyes watching me."

"It seems a shame to waste all of Mr. Shalazar's hard work," the small man in white interjects. His voice is surprisingly firm and carrying, for all its mildness.

"Mr. Shalazar's hard work is all over this damn compound. And this bastard's resisted reprogramming every time we've tried it. It's not worth the time or the money anymore, not now that we've got the other subjects," the man in the black suit shoots back, sniffling loudly. "Good riddance, I say. Miss Seward, handkerchief." He turns and walks towards the door, holding out a hand. The mousy-looking woman rolls her eyes and digs in her pocket, running after the man in the black suit with short, mincing footsteps.

The man in the white suit lingers for a moment, looking up and meeting Kozmotis' eyes. And then, so quickly that Kozmotis thinks he might have imagined it, the little man winks. The silver crescent-moon pin on his old-fashioned cravat winks, too, the light glancing off of it as he turns to leave.

Just as the man in white crosses the threshold of the door, the halogen light flickers. It's only for a fraction of a second, but for that fraction of a second, the room is full of stark black shadows.

When the light flickers back on, Kozmotis is free and the bed is empty.

* * *

AN: For a prompt on the meme. OP wanted a secret government experiment AU, and I have been wanting to write a secret government experiment AU since...pretty much forever. It was meant to be.


	2. Chapter 2

"Containment breach in Sector 5, containment breach in Sector 5, security personnel to Sector 5…"

It's dark. He blinks open his eyes, and it's light. His Man of Moon is smiling at him, and he smiles back.

"Nightlight," his Man of Moon says, and he flickers to attention. "There's something I need you to do for me."

…

"The lights were only out for a second. He can't have gotten far."

Kozmotis leans against the wall, trying to catch his breath. Shadow-travel is taxing; he feels as exhausted as he did after his first day of basic training. He's got to keep moving, though, or the guards the voices around the corner belong to are going to catch him in the middle of the open hallway, and he's in no fit state to fight.

"Surveillance says he's still in the building. They're checking all the cams, it's just a matter of time before they find him."

_Dammit_.

Kozmotis pushes himself off the wall, back onto his feet. It doesn't sound like the guards are getting any closer, and they don't seem to have noticed anything out of the ordinary. But if he moves too much or too quickly, they'll definitely hear him. And he's sure they don't have orders to take him alive.

Still, if there's one thing he's gotten from this organization's sorry attempts at 'reprogramming', it's a solid understanding of how to work his new abilities.

He drops to one knee, smooth and soundless, and puts a hand to the slightly-sticky laminate flooring inside the patch of shadow he casts. It spreads out around his hand, tendrils of dark that stretch and warp and grow fainter the farther they reach. Not strong enough for combat, but more than enough for reconnaissance.

There are two guards casting shadows in the hall beyond, armed but with their weapons holstered, moving slowly, almost casually. If they'd been his men they'd never have been this lax, not with a dangerous hostile loose in the area. He'll have to teach them the error of their ways.

These halls are fluorescent-lit; the bulbs flickering as the gas inside them glows and fizzles with the alternating current. It isn't hard to find one weaker than the others, put it out with a simple nudge.

The guards go quiet.

"Was that -"

He doesn't give the man time to finish the sentence. The spikes of apprehension from both guards gives him the power boost he needs to wrap the new sliver of darkness around unprotected throats, bash heads together with enough force to put both men under. For one black and ugly moment, he considers killing them then and there. It won't do any real good, they're only a small, insignificant part of the evil here, and yet by their silence, their mere presence, they're letting that evil continue. And besides, if he gets rid of them now, there'll be two fewer guards to hinder his escape.

He shakes the feeling off, leaves them lying unconscious in the hallway behind him.

…

There are two Tall Ones sleeping on the floor. One is bleeding at the temple, but both are breathing. The shadows here smell foul, and curl into nasty shapes where his light touches them.

Nightlight grins, and glows a little brighter, and follows the trail of foul-smelling shadows.

…

There are three of them around the next corner, coming up on it too quickly to try the same trick with the shadows. Kozmotis swallows a curse, scans the narrow hallway for somewhere to hide, and finding nothing, presses himself flat against the wall by the corner. He hasn't got the energy to try to duck through shadow again, and even if he had, he wouldn't know where to go.

He should really have taken the other guards' guns.

The first guard to round the corner gets yanked into a stranglehold, pulled tight against Kozmotis' chest as a human shield even as he cuts off the man's air. The other two are quick to react, but not quite quick enough.

"Let him go," the woman holding the impressive handgun says. "You don't have anywhere to go."

"That's what the directors thought, too," Kozmotis bluffs. The woman's smile is pitying, but her eyes are steel and they don't leave his face.

"Drop 'im," the burly man demands, his voice surprisingly soft. Kozmotis scans the hall, mentally flicking through scenarios, trying to figure out the best way out of this mess.

"All right," he says, at last, releasing the first guard, who stumbles forward gasping in air like a drowning man. Kozmotis raises both hands –

- and before the bullets can reach him, pulls up the first guard's shadow and lets the bullets strike into it and clatter harmlessly to the floor, momentum spent. Before any of the guards can respond, he moves, diving out of the line of fire while coaxing the shadow up and over the first guard like a wave. His screams don't last long, barely audible as they are over the pounding of gunfire.

One of the bullets ricochets, somehow, and the light directly overhead shatters. The woman swears, a string of curses abruptly cut off when thick black shadow slams her and the burly guard against the wall. She sinks down, disarmed and looking dazed; her partner reaches for the pistol in his shoulder holster, and Kozmotis slams him against the wall again, for good measure. He goes down heavily and doesn't come back up.

Kozmotis reaches up, and out, and every light in that span of hallway explodes at once, a chorus of loud _pop_s and showers of sparks, plunging the hall into darkness. Maybe it'll just make it easier for them to find him, but he thinks the gunfire probably did that already. He's lost the element of surprise. Now, he needs to be armed, needs to use the terrain to his advantage. After all, there are only two ways he can go from here; forward, or back the way he came. And even if they didn't know how much shadow-travel takes out of him, he'd still expect them to send the heavy artillery to box him in. It isn't a matter of whether there'll be another confrontation, but when.

He hurries forwards, carefully scanning the hall before him for doors or branches which might conceal an ambush or offer an escape. The lights overhead flicker out in his wake.

…

The trail leads straight into darkness.

Nightlight pauses where the first curling shadowsedge away from his toes, and draws the weapon his Man of Moon has given him. It's not quite like a dagger, and it's not quite like a light, but it glows brightly enough to drive back the nastiest of the shadows and he has no doubt it will cut quite sharply when he asks it to.

He holds it high, and he smiles his brightest smile, and he darts bravely forward into the dark.

…

It's too quiet.

There should have been something by now, should have been some response to the gunfire and the dark. Surely whoever is in charge of surveillance has seen the trail he's left behind him. But there's been nothing, no sign of life anywhere, and Kozmotis finds himself just waiting for the axe to fall.

He stops at the intersection of two hallways, unsure of which direction to take. He still hasn't been able to find any doors or any sign that these hallways serve a purpose other than to confound him, and he's just beginning to suspect that he's walked straight into a trap when that suspicion is confirmed. A section of wall slips soundlessly aside in the hallway to his right, answering his question about where the doors are. Five – no, six black-clad figures spill out, all of them masked and armed with almost comically oversized assault rifles. He turns to his left, and yes, there's another small squad coming from the other hall. The sound of booted feet against the laminate flooring tells him that the way forward, too, is blocked. At least someone in this building knows how to coordinate an ambush.

They're all so overconfident knowing that they've got him boxed in. Despite the fact that they're facing a lone, unarmed man who has nonetheless somehow managed to evade death three times in the past hour, not one of them is properly afraid. It's like an itch just behind his eyes, and the smile that curls across his face feels sharp and unfamiliar.

He'll just have to change that.

…

There's a commotion up ahead, shouts and bangs and screams and low rolling thunder. No, not thunder. _Laughter_. Nightlight has heard laughter before, often, has an easy laugh himself, but that always sounds bright. Not this dark and strange and maddened sound. For the first time, he frowns.

His smile returns, though, when the light from his dagger pierces through the swirling dark and points him straight toward the Tall One he's come to find. The strange and sordid laughter is his, as are the nasty-looking shadows, and for just a moment Nightlight pauses, because the screams do not. This dark and sinister stranger is the one his Man of Moon has sent him to find, and suddenly Nightlight knows why he was given the dagger.

He raises it, without hesitation, and glowing as fiercely as he can, flies straight into the battle and the dark.

…

Three members of Alpha Team are down, Beta Team's compromised, and William is starting to understand why they sent three full squads to take down this sonofabitch. He'd laughed at the idea before; now, he's wishing they had another squad or two to back them up. Or maybe an army. Guns aren't going to be enough. The bastard fights like a madman, without any regard for personal safety and with a kind of unholy glee. It doesn't help that half the time they can't even _see_ him, and he comes out of –

_Shitshitshitshit!_

William fires, aimlessly, blindly, but the bullets can't touch the shadows and the gun is wrenched from his hands before he can react. Something collides with his chest, knocking the breath out of him even as it knocks him off his feet, and his vision explodes in stars. He gasps for breath, trying to blink away the afterimages, trying to _move_, but he can't, he's going to die here -

There's a burst of brilliant light that shorts out his goggles, floods the hall, drives all of the shadows away. When it clears, the fluorescent lights flicker back on, the dark losing its strange heaviness and mindless menace. There's no clue left behind to explain what just happened, nothing but black-armoured bodies lying strewn across the hallway and chunks blasted out of the walls.

Pitch Black is gone.

William doesn't know if he should be relieved or even more worried.


	3. Chapter 3

Kozmotis wakes up, and immediately wishes he hadn't.

Every inch of him feels raw, as though he's been sandblasted and rolled through salt, and the pain that knifes behind his eyes is to a headache what a tank is to a Glock. Still, he tries to sit up, which is the second-stupidest idea he's had since waking up, the first being waking up in the first place. His left shoulder explodes in pain, and he falls back with a curse.

A faint bluish glow flickers to life somewhere to his left, illuminating the space he's found himself in. It's a small room, not much more than a closet, and lit only by whatever's causing the blue glow. The glow which, he notices, is growing stronger by the second.

A moment later, someone leans over him, and he has to do his best not to stare. Judging by the face, it's a boy, no older than thirteen or fourteen, pale as the moon and slender as a sunbeam, with oddly-curled pure white hair. This would be a strange enough sight on its own, but the boy's unusual appearance isn't what causes Kozmotis to boggle. No, that's because the bluish glow is coming _from_ the boy.

His worried expression splits into a broad, genuine smile when he sees that Kozmotis is awake, and he glows a little more brightly. It's enough for Kozmotis to be able to make out the shape of a door in the dark, pick out the outlines of a railing along the walls.

"Hello," Kozmotis offers, because he doesn't know yet if this strange, spectral boy is hostile or not, and it doesn't hurt to be polite. The boy doesn't respond, at least, not in words, but he does cant his head to one side and give Kozmotis a friendly grin. Kozmotis tries to smile back, hoping it doesn't look too much like a grimace of pain. "Where are we?"

The boy shrugs, gestures with one spindly arm towards the walls. Blue reflects back, eerie and ghostly in the metal of three of the walls. The fourth is mostly taken up by the door, two imposing sliding panels that meet in the middle. It is this that gives him his first clue as to where he is.

It looks like the entrance to the arena, the steel-walled, soundproof testing room where they'd tried time and again to break him to their will, with varying levels of success. They'd kept him in a tiny chamber much like this one until they wanted to begin the trials. The walls seem to close in on him at the thought, and he wishes he could just forget how they could electrify the floor if he didn't respond quickly enough.

"What happened?" he asks, trying to push the thought aside. He doesn't really need a recap; fragments of memories are beginning to trickle back. Screams, muzzle flashes in the darkness, the acrid smell of gunfire and plaster and blood. Searing light and pain. Is it a recent memory half-lost, or an old one half- unburied? He doesn't quite know for sure. "How did I end up here? And…_why_ do I feel like I've been sandblasted and stabbed?"

The boy's bright smile turns sheepish, and he ducks his head out of Kozmotis' line of sight. When he pops back up (literally pops, like a jack-in-the-box), he's holding a single, perfect, deadly-sharp shard of crystal. It seems to catch the boy's soft glow and channel it from base to wicked point, gleaming like a small sun is trapped within it. Kozmotis flinches back before he even gets a good look at the thing, his shoulder screaming in protest.

"_Wait_," he hisses between his teeth, the pieces beginning to slot into place. "You _stabbed_ me?" He's only dimly aware of the prickle on the edge of his senses that means the shadows have woken up and taken notice, responding to his distress.

The boy's eyebrows furrow at the way the shadows curl, and he raises the prismatic dagger, forcing them to recoil. Kozmotis tries, unsuccessfully, to push himself to his feet. Why this strange creature hasn't yet finished him off, he doesn't know, but he is now very sure that its intentions are not friendly.

He has a sinking feeling that he's been captured by one of the project's successes.

He's only faced a few of the Guardians, the barely-human supersoldiers that the project was designed to produce, but they've always been ruthless, unswayable, and utterly unmerciful. If this boy is one of them, Kozmotis won't escape this encounter. Then again, if the boy were a Guardian, Kozmotis would already be dead. Soldiers like that don't miss.

Unless – he shudders at the thought – the higher-ups have changed their minds. Unless they're so _impressed_ with his aborted escape that they want him alive.

"What do you want with me?" Kozmotis demands, and the boy shrugs his slim shoulders, a frustrated frown passing over his features like a cloud across the sun. He still doesn't speak, and for the first time Kozmotis wonders if he even can. Muteness wouldn't be the strangest result to come from the researchers' tender ministrations.

He sighs, and slumps back onto the floor. If the strange boy intends to kill him, then he'll fight. If the people in charge have decided he needs to be tormented further, then he'll find out soon enough. Until then, though, he might as well conserve his energy, give his aching body the rest it craves.

"What's your name?" he asks, into the silence. The boy flickers, bright and then dim, barely brighter than a moonless night. It might be a language of sorts, but Kozmotis can't understand it.

He blows out a breath, and tugs on the dark behind his head. It coils down and laps lazily around his ears, moving almost as lethargically as he feels. It's reassuring to know that he has a weapon, though, something to defend himself if (when) he needs it. It's reassuring to know that in all of this madness, something is on his side.

It's then that the room lurches, lets out a long, metallic groan, and begins to move.

Kozmotis shouts in surprise and tries to leap to his feet, which refuse to cooperate. He lands flat on his ass before he realizes that the room he's found himself in isn't a room at all. It's an elevator. An elevator which, currently, is rising up towards some unknown. The spectral boy isn't worried at all, but that really isn't reassuring.

It's a short ride, but it feels like a lifetime. The cheery _ding!_ that heralds their arrival sounds more like a death knell. He moves to press himself flat against the elevator wall, to at least try to make himself less vulnerable, but his legs are still far too shaky and weak, and he flops back onto the floor. At least this time he's upright.

When the doors slide open, he flings an arm up to protect his eyes from the sudden glare, silently cursing himself for not realizing that the light would be so harsh after the boy's soft glow. His old commander would give him hell if he could see Kozmotis now, blind, injured, and practically helpless quite literally at the feet of an unknown opponent. He hopes that whatever is about to happen will at least be quick.

"General Pitchiner. It's an honour to actually meet you."

Kozmotis looks straight up, which turns out to be a thoroughly stupid idea. He winces away from the light, squeezing his eyes shut and trying to ignore the afterimages fireworking against his eyelids.

He doesn't need to see the face, though, to recognize the voice of the man who may have saved his life.

He's dimly aware of movement, and the man in the white suit sounds shocked and repentant when he says, "I'm sorry, I didn't think the light would be quite so painful. I'm afraid I did know that the dagger would hurt, but it was unfortunately necessary. There was really no other way of stopping you, short of putting a bullet through your head, and that would just have been a shame…won't you come out of the elevator?"

Kozmotis bites back the sharp retort he's longing to deliver. The man in the white suit seems completely pragmatic and more than a little unhinged, a dangerous combination. The last thing Kozmotis wants to do right now is provoke him.

Kozmotis wobbles a little when he stands, but is pleased to discover that his legs actually support him this time, rather than buckling immediately under him. He still feels strained and raw, but the feeling is fading, and when he opens his eyes the afterimages have finally disappeared.

The man in the white suit is shorter than Kozmotis had thought he was, and slightly rounder, and his smile is huge and charming. "I'm afraid no longer a general," Kozmotis says. "And you have me at a disadvantage."

The little man claps his hands together once, smiling broadly. "Ah, of course! Where are my manners? Manfred Ignatius Moon, at your service."

Kozmotis raises an eyebrow, but doesn't comment. It would hardly be polite, and besides, he's in no position to judge.

"And of course, you've met Nightlight," the man – Mr. Moon? – continues, waving towards the spectral boy, who bobs his head in something resembling a bow. Kozmotis inclines his head, as well, and the boy stifles a silent laugh behind his hand. "Nightlight is my – shall we say, bodyguard? I asked him to bring you here, and it seems that it was a very good thing that I did."

"Thank you for putting out the lights for me," Kozmotis says quickly. The memories are threatening to turn from a trickle to a flood, and he could swear he can smell the cold-iron tang of terror and blood intermingled. "I have to ask _why_, though."

Mr. Moon's round face turns serious, his smile hidden in the creases of his eyes. "I need your help."


	4. Chapter 4

"My help?" Kozmotis parrots dumbly. He's sure he must be gawking. Mr. Moon doesn't seem to notice, although Nightlight's smirk seems a little too self-satisfied.

"Yes. I'm in dire need of a strategist and a leader."

He can't be hearing this. The man, Kozmotis decides, is more than a _little_ unhinged. His voice is clipped and tense when he answers, "I've been officially declared a failure. As far as Project Guardian is concerned, I no longer exist. Why go to all that trouble if you only wanted to -"

"You misunderstand." Mr. Moon sighs, and Kozmotis takes a step back, out of reach, just in case. "I don't want you back in the _project_. It was enough work to make the director of defense agree to have you decommissioned. No, the project has gotten out of hand. The Guardians were never meant to be mindless weapons."

"You're in charge," Kozmotis snaps. He doesn't really know what position the man occupies, but it seems clear that Mr. Moon is someone important. "If you're so displeased with the fruits of your labours, then put an end to them."

"I understand that you're upset -"

That's the understatement of the century. Kozmotis only barely manages to suppress a bitter laugh. "Upset? No, I'm not upset. I'm _upset_ when the barista gets my coffee order wrong. I'm _upset_ when there's an accident on the freeway and I'm stuck in traffic for an hour. I'm not _upset_ about being stolen away from my home and my family and my _life_ to be used as a human guinea pig, or a pawn in some depraved game of soldiers!" He's ranting now, his voice hovering on the edge of a shout, and he pauses in an attempt to salvage what little is left of his composure, running a hand distractedly through his hair. His headache is back and beginning to build, mounting pressure behind his eyes like an itch he can't quite scratch. "I'm not _upset_. And I am not your toy, to be played with when you like and forgotten about afterwards."

Mr. Moon's smile is impassive, his true emotions unreadable. "This is why I chose you," he says, and there's a hint of pride in his pleasant voice that makes Kozmotis' skin crawl. "I knew you'd understand."

"Did you hear a single word I just -"

"Of course!" Mr. Moon seems far too delighted with himself. "And you're absolutely right. My mother and father would be rolling in their graves if they could see the cruelty their hard work is being used to commit. It's time someone put a stop to it."

"And that 'someone' couldn't be _you_?"

Mr. Moon shakes his head, and his eyes turn sad. "It's gone so far beyond my control – not that I was in control in the first place. I was so young when my parents died, you see, and the trustee they chose to take charge of Moonclipper Corp was unfortunately _not_ trustworthy. I have no real power here. All I can do is watch – and, occasionally, influence." His eyes actually _twinkle_.

Kozmotis frowns, and begins to scan the room for possible escape routes. He has the very strong feeling he's going to need them.

He's just cataloguing the points of access – elevator, a door on the far wall, and the walls of plate-glass windows that look out over miles and miles of wilderness – when Nightlight catches his eye. The look the glowing boy gives Kozmotis isn't truly threatening, but it is unnerving enough to make him turn his attention back to Mr. Moon.

"So this is your idea of influence?" he says, finally, when it becomes clear that Mr. Moon is waiting for an answer. "Getting a discarded test subject to do your dirty work for you?"

"No." Mr. Moon's smile turns sharp. "Asking an experienced soldier for his help. I intend to do whatever it takes to bring this project down, in flames if necessary. But in this endeavour, I suspect I will be of more use from inside."

Kozmotis has worked with one or two insiders before, and in his experience, anyone claiming to want to remain within a power structure to bring it down from inside is just working both angles, trying to make sure that they are the ones who come out on top. Often at the expense of both sides.

"No," he says, firmly.

"I'm sorry?"

His head is throbbing, and the way Nightlight grips that _damn_ dagger doesn't so much worry him as piss him off. "No. I won't work for you."

Mr. Moon blinks, and a tiny wicked part of Kozmotis is delighted by how nonplussed he looks. "You won't – You _do_ know that you weren't the only one who was snatched away from a home or a family? And they're still taking people. There are _children_ out there right now who are being put through the same hell as you were -"

"And I'm sure you only want to protect them all, not turn them into devoted, voiceless _bodyguards_," Kozmotis snaps. Nightlight takes a step back, and from the way his brow furrows Kozmotis can tell he's struck a nerve. He wishes he hadn't – it's not the boy's fault, after all – but can't bring himself to be too sorry. It's all too obvious now that Mr. Moon considers himself a chessmaster, and rather than feeling guilty enough to relent, all Kozmotis feels is a flare of anger at the man's clumsy attempts at emotional manipulation. Now, more than ever, he's sure he's making the right decision. "I have no love for the project or the people behind it, but I will not bring it down for _you. _And I don't need your help." He turns on his heel, sweeping back towards the elevator.

He stops dead, though, at Mr. Moon's next words.

"Those children? Your daughter is one of them."

He can't move. Can't think. Can't breathe. When thought finally returns, it comes riding a wave of razor-edged rage, irresistible as the tide and deadly as an undertow.

He turns back, and judging by the sudden shiver of fear from both Mr. Moon and Nightlight, his expression must be terrible. He can't bring himself to care.

"Where is she?"

He's surprised by how level his voice sounds, how calm. How unlike the hurricane of rage and terror and hate boiling in his head.

It's a long moment before Mr. Moon speaks. Too long. "I think you don't -"

"I will kill you where you stand if you don't tell me where my daughter is _right. Now._"

Nightlight draws his dagger, and the shadows stir to life, sluggish and sleepy. Kozmotis pulls them to him, gathering dark around himself against that burning light. A single long shadow reaches out, almost without his having to think, and falls across Mr. Moon's round face.

To his credit, the man shows none of the fear that flickers through his mind. "I don't know where she is. I only saw the paperwork when she was brought in. All I know is that she's here, somewhere."

"And you thought it would be a good idea to use that knowledge as a _bargaining chip_?" Kozmotis spits the words, clenching a fist to keep from wringing the man's pathetic neck.

Nightlight steps forward, putting himself between Mr. Moon and the shadows, his light bright enough to make Kozmotis' eyes sting and his dagger held ready to strike. His form is impressive; he clearly knows how to handle a knife, without any amateurish dramatics. Kozmotis' shoulder twinges, and he bites back a snarl.

"I will find her," he promises. "And then I will burn this place to the ground."

Before Mr. Moon can say anything more, before Nightlight can move, Kozmotis slips backwards into shadow and away.


	5. Chapter 5

"Subject: Jack Frost. Trial number sixty-eight," the voice on the intercom says.

Jack Frost. That's his name. How does he know? Because the men in white told him so. He thinks perhaps he had another name, once. He thinks perhaps he had a lot of things, once. But that was a long, long time ago.

The ice creaks.

"Commence trial."

The ice shatters. The heavy steel door slides aside, dragging the shards after it. Jack (because that _must_ be his name, he certainly doesn't have any other, and why would the men in white lie?) wonders why his ice is thickest over the door. They might punish him for freezing over the little chamber, but he gets so _bored_ waiting for the trials to start.

_The trials_. They'd been easy to begin with, making swirls of frost, learning to dance with the wind, filling rooms with knee-deep snow. It had been _fun_. And then one day, he'd walked out into the arena and a girl in a white kimono had tried to kill him.

And that had been the start of a whole _different_ kind of fun.

The shock that hits him is familiar by now, but that doesn't make it hurt any less, doesn't mean he doesn't jump away from the feeling of being violently turned inside out. He stumbles out into the arena, pulling himself together. The soles of his bare feet are smoking slightly, but he pretends not to notice because the men in white are watching, always watching, and they don't like him to show pain.

He lets ice grow on the soles of his feet to put out the burning, and looks around for his opponent.

The arena seems empty, but Jack doesn't believe it is for an instant. He's faced a boy the size of a mouse, a woman whose whole body shifted colours to match whatever she stood in front of. There will be an opponent, somewhere. They love to see him fight.

But for once, nothing happens. And before long, Jack finds himself growing bored again. Before he's really given it any thought, he's forgotten all about the trial and the shocks and his opponent, focusing his entire being on whipping up a blizzard in the middle of the arena. If he can't fight, at least he can put on a show.

The wind whispers a warning in his ear, and he dives forward into the air. Something heavy whips past him with a noise like tearing silk. It misses by inches, and Jack's heart leaps.

_Finally!_

He whirls in a circle, conjuring a series of razor-sharp ice shards that slice through the storm in all directions. He isn't quite sure where his opponent actually_ is_. Clever of them to use Jack's own powers to his advantage, let Jack distract himself and conjure up a smokescreen at the same time. It won't do whoever it is much good, though, because Jack is in his own element. The arena is blanketed in white, its cold steel walls growing a thick coat of frost, the air cold enough to make even _him_ shiver. Anyone else will be losing fingers soon enough.

The boomerang that flies out of his snowstorm and clips his shoulder, sending him spinning wildly out of control, seems to say otherwise, though.

Jack frowns, and lets himself be carried up and around inside his snowstorm, trying to calculate the weapon's trajectory in his head. If it caught him on the way back around, then it would have had to have been thrown from –

_there!_

Jack just has time to set his sights on the figure, little more than a grey blur in the teeth of the storm, before the wind launches him at his opponent, as eager for blood as he is. The sharp bite of pain when he moves his right arm is an inconvenience, nothing more; the bones'll mend soon enough, and if he doesn't fight now he'll have more than just one broken bone to worry about. Ice builds in his good hand, forming into an icicle longer than he is tall and deadly sharp at the end.

He's inches from driving it into the grey shape when he sees what it really is and veers up, too late, too late. Someone slams into him from above, knocking them both headfirst into the drift he'd mistaken for a figure. The broken bones in his arm grind against each other, and for an instant Jack's vision goes white, lungs freezing shut at the pain.

He recovers fast, though, as he always has, grinning into the ice crystals caking his face. "There you are! I was starting to think you'd wimped out on me."

He doesn't get an answer. Wasn't really expecting one. None of the others have talked to him. Some of them probably couldn't, either because they were missing their voices, or because they didn't understand language anymore. It doesn't matter. Jack talks anyway, talks and talks and talks even though he can't remember the last time anyone acknowledged his voice.

Claws slash through his thin shirt, shred his shoulders, draw lines of fire down his back. Jack curls into himself, protecting his head and his vitals from the claws while he gathers ice around his good arm. As soon as it gains an edge, he whirls upwards with all the force the wind can lend him. His makeshift blade catches his opponent square across the face and his momentum knocks them both over, into another drift. But this time, Jack is free, and this time, Jack has the weapon, and now they're going to play by _his_ rules.

"- lockdown, halt all procedures and -"

The voice on the intercom cuts through the howl of the wind, and Jack stops dead in the middle of his hurricane, the snow growing light and fluffy without his direction. This is something new, something interesting…perhaps even something _fun_. The voice doesn't sound particularly entertained, though; instead it sounds strained, even a little scared.

The big overhead lights flash on with a noise like a slamming door, blinding Jack for a long moment. From the loud snarl that comes from the snowbank, he guesses that his opponent is having the same difficulty. The voice on the intercom is familiar, but the edge of panic in it isn't.

"Trial suspended until further notice. Cease all hostilities immediately."

Jack drops into a small drift with a whooshing sigh, disappointed and maybe just a little relieved. And just when it looked like things were about to get good, too.

His opponent does not take their orders so peacefully. Jack's jaw drops, quite literally, when the other actually _speaks_. "What? Oh, you have _got_ to be bloody kidding me. Coddlin' the anklebiter's not going to give 'im that killer instinct, yanno!"

He doesn't get an answer. Jack could have told him he wouldn't. The men in white don't ever answer.

"Return to your chambers immediately and await further instructio-" The voice over the intercom cuts off abruptly, and there are a lot of whispers and then an ear-piercing whine and a click. The arena goes eerily silent. The unspoken 'or else' hangs heavy in the air.

Jack puts the brakes on the snowstorm reluctantly (play nice Jack do as you're told) and gets a good look at his opponent for the first time as the other man picks himself out of the snowbank Jack threw him into. He's six feet easy, dark-skinned, and bare-chested despite the good three feet of snow. The claws that left Jack bloody and torn up are thick and black and attached to broad hands that would look less out of place on an artist, and the man's got an impressive set of fangs to match. His slate-coloured hair looks soft as rabbit fur and trails down his spine like it's trying to become a pelt. He looks like he could snap Jack in half, and probably _could_, too – Jack's got bird bones, which would be a liability if he didn't get along with the wind so well. If he didn't have bright and jagged ice to keep everyone trying to hurt him at arm's length.

The other man eyes Jack with a look of surprise that Jack is sure must mirror his own. "Christ. You really _are_ just an anklebiter, aren't you?"

Jack doesn't really know what that means, but it sounds dismissive, and he curls the fingers of his good hand into the snow, fully intending to hit the other man square in the face with a snowball. It's not hostile, exactly. He wouldn't be breaking any rules. Not that that would matter if they decide to punish him, of course, but there's really no snowball fight that isn't worth the trouble he'll get into for starting it.

He drops the snowball without a thought, though, at the sound of the explosion.


	6. Chapter 6

"All departments into lockdown, repeat, all departments into lockdown…"

Nightlight ignores the voice on the intercom, perching on the chair before the wall of screens. Views of different parts of the facility flicker and buzz on each screen, and Nightlight frowns. He can't see any sign of the foul, curling shadows.

He huffs out a soundless sigh, and shakes his head. He wouldn't be here if his Man of Moon hadn't asked him to find the Dark One. But his Man of Moon _has_ asked, and even though Nightlight would like nothing better than to stick the Dark One with his dagger again for being so awful to his Man of Moon, he will do as he is bid.

"Find him, please," his Man of Moon had said. "Follow him. Help him if you can. And stop him if you have to."

Nightlight almost hopes he'll have to.

But first, he has to _find_ the Dark One.

A light starts blinking a cheery red on the huge desk of lights and buttons and knobs laid out before him. Nightlight tilts his head, looks at it curiously until he notices the little label saying 'Experimental Command Centre'. He grins, brightly, and jumps lightly up from the chair.

The Tall One who had been in the chair when Nightlight arrived groans, and Nightlight stops, wondering if he might be waking up, but he only mutters something about strawberries and goes back to sleep. Nightlight leaves him sleeping on the floor, and goes to find the Experimental Command Centre.

…

Kozmotis frowns at the twisted mass of metal and glass that had been, moments ago, a rather large computer display. "I doubt that that was supposed to happen," he says, half to himself, half to the two white-coated researchers still conscious.

The man remains silent, his fear thick enough to choke his tongue. But the woman, despite her small stature, is apparently braver than she is wise. "You really think we don't have failsafes against break-ins and _terrorist activity_? All of that experimental data is stored in the backup server now, and you won't get at _that_ without permission. Or an army and a couple hundred years."

Kozmotis stares at her until the colour drains from her cheeks and she takes a step backwards, until the little seed of sensible unease in the depths of her brain finally blossoms into fright.

"Fine," he concludes, after a silence calculated to make them both sweat. "Then we'll do this the hard way."

The smile that crosses his face is lazy and cruel and not entirely false.

He steps forward, dragging dark behind him, more for show than anything else. These two are not soldiers, not fighters, and once disarmed they're as harmless as any cornered animal. He just has to keep them more scared than angry, too afraid to think of fighting back and yet not so afraid that they lash out without thinking.

"One of you," he starts, and gives himself a point mentally when they both try not to look at the other, "is going to tell me where I can find Seraphina Pitchiner. And it really doesn't matter to me which of you it is. The other," and his smile grows wide enough that it's almost a snarl, "is expendable."

Both pairs of eyes dart towards the crumpled body on the floor behind them, only for a fraction of an instant, but more than long enough for Kozmotis to know he's got them.

And then, he's lost them.

The flicker of hope in the woman's eyes as she looks past his shoulder is only barely enough warning. Kozmotis sidesteps, and just barely avoids being struck by something heavy and fast-moving. For a moment, he lets himself hope that he's just missed one of the staff (although the thought leaves a bitter taste in his mouth; he's a tactician, a thinker, he's supposed to cover all of these angles before barging into a situation). It's a fool's hope, though, quickly dashed when he spins out of the way of the second boomerang and finds himself nose-to-nose with a scowling, dark face.

"Oh, good, it's the rabbit," Kozmotis says, mind whirling as he tries to calculate his best chance of escape. He doesn't have _time_ for this. "I was wondering which one of you would show up."

"They call me _Bunny_," the man in front of him snarls, and Kozmotis quickly backsteps out of the way of his dagger-like claws. It's lucky, really, that the most easily-provoked and hair-triggered of the Guardians is the one who's found Kozmotis. And even better, the man has come alone.

No, not quite alone, Kozmotis realizes, scanning the room. There's a boy lurking by the door, a boy who can't be any older than eighteen or nineteen, pale as winter and still as death. Blood is drying on his clothes and the jagged, open gashes in his shoulders, but he doesn't seem to notice or mind. Brainwashed out of existence, Kozmotis thinks, as he dodges another blow and sidesteps a third, disappearing backwards into a flurry of dark only to emerge again behind the two researchers he still hasn't forgotten. Poor child.

The experimenters had tried, at first, to purge the subjects of independent thought, before realizing it made them useless in situations requiring adaptation and ingenuity. Which, of course, are exactly the situations that such weapons would be needed for. The Guardians are the successful compromises, their loyalty and ruthlessness so fiercely cemented that it can override any sense of morality or empathy, conditioned to take orders but also to _think_ about their best execution.

And Kozmotis is lucky enough to be facing off against one.

Bunny lets out another barely-human growl, but he doesn't attack, no doubt hampered by Kozmotis' human shield. This would never have worked if the two hadn't been researchers at the facility, Kozmotis doesn't doubt. But they are, and this is _working_, and it only has to work for a few seconds more -

"Up to your old tricks again, _Pitch_?" Bunny asks, and Kozmotis winces. The word is like a barb.

"_That_ is _not_ my name."

The smile that crosses Bunny's face is triumphant and just a little vindictive. "You keep telling yourself that. Maybe someday it'll be true."

Kozmotis lunges forward, realizes too late that he's let himself be goaded out of safety, and gets a powerful kick to the gut for his trouble. The air rushes out of his lungs and the shadows seize instinctively around him, pinning Bunny to the floor even as Kozmotis flies back. He slams into the man behind him, knocking them both to the floor and earning a scream from the woman, before the flailing dark catches her across the back of the head and she drops like a stone.

For the first time, the pale boy moves. He flickers past Kozmotis like a streak of light, close enough for Kozmotis to see that the tips of his fingers and his bare feet are stained the dark, dull purple of a bruise. He catches the woman before she can hit the ground, shifting to lay her down gently out of the way, and when he looks up he meets Kozmotis' eyes.

Kozmotis sucks in a breath, ignoring the line of fire it burns through his chest, and manages a rather weak, "Hello." The boy's eyes are remarkable, the washed-out blue of ancient sea-ice and the soft grey-white of winter skies, but what's even more extraordinary is the fact that there's acknowledgement and life in them. Even, perhaps, a flicker of mischief.

"And who are _you_?" Kozmotis asks softly. The boy scowls, the hollows of his eyes growing darker with shadow, and raises a hand that suddenly sprouts deadly-looking icicles, but he doesn't strike.

"Jack Frost," the boy answers, and his voice sounds surprisingly deep and _normal_, coming from such an ethereal slip of a thing. Kozmotis hadn't really been expecting an answer, but even though it doesn't really get him anywhere, he's glad to have one.

He opens his mouth to ask another question, only to be abruptly and painfully reminded of why one should never stop to chat in the middle of a battlefield. Bunny lands on his back like a ton of bricks, one hand curling through Kozmotis' hair, leaving gouges in his scalp, and yanks his head backwards. Before those wicked claws can come anywhere near his throat, Kozmotis picks Bunny off his back with one thick curl of dark, and flings him unceremoniously into the wreckage of the computer display.

It sparks and sputters, and Bunny twitches soundlessly as electricity courses through him. It won't keep him down for long, Kozmotis is sure, but long enough to make an escape. He pushes himself to his feet, and smiles at the boy – Jack – not entirely insincerely.

"Well, I'd love to stick around, but I've got places to be, people to rescue." He brushes himself off, glances around for the deepest patch of shadow.

He steps back, into the dark, unable to resist a touch of drama to mark his exit. His voice echoes back through the room. "And a word of warning: _Stay out of my way_."


	7. Chapter 7

Katherine reads the last sentence, blinks, and flips through the last few pages of her book, hoping wildly that there's another chapter hidden somewhere, or at least another paragraph. Anything but this cliffhanger!

Unfortunately, all she finds is a black page on which, in fancy white type, the name and release date of the next book in the series is printed. October. She can't wait until October to find out what happened. She is going to _die_, simply _perish_ from anticipation and dread and the _wait_.

"Uncle Ombric," she wails, and her uncle sighs indulgently.

"I told you not to start reading a series before all the books are released," he tuts.

"But _she's going to the dark side_! They can't just leave it there!"

Her uncle pushes himself up from his chair. "Obviously they have, or you wouldn't be screeching about it." He walks over, peering over her shoulder at the book. "When does the next one come out, again?"

"October. Uncle Ombric, there's no way I'm going to last that long!" She shuts the book with a snap, and smiles up at her uncle hopefully. "Do _you_ have anything I could read?"

He twirls his beard, looking deep in thought. "Not with me," he says, at last. "Would you like to have a look at what I'm working on instead? Perhaps that will pull you out of your despair."

"Of course!" Katherine looks for a clear place on the desk in front of her to put down her book, and finding none, sets it instead atop a pile of hard-bound technical manuals and files. She's careful not to move anything – her uncle's organizational system may _look_ like it lacks rhyme or rhythm, but he knows where everything is and will spend hours tearing it all apart to find one misplaced file. "What are you building this time?"

"Not building, programming." Ombric gestures to his computer screen. "Tell me, do you know LISP?"

"I thought that was a speech problem?" Katherine admits. Her uncle chuckles.

"Maybe I should get you a book on programming languages."

"Maybe I'll take a walk," Katherine says quickly. It's not that she's not interested, it's just that trying to learn languages out of books, even the ones her uncle uses to program and direct the nanobots that are his life's work, is exhausting and worse, _boring_. At least when Ombric teaches her himself, he makes every lesson fascinating, like he's giving her the keys to unlocking a whole other world. When Katherine tries to _read_ about Unix or C++, she just feels her head spinning.

"Don't go far," Ombric warns her, and Katherine laughs. He worries about her whenever she comes along to the facility, even though it's so heavily guarded and locked down that she's probably safer here than she is at home. She's more likely to be struck by lightning than to get into trouble here.

Still, she promises, "No farther than the vending machines."

"All right." Ombric still looks uncertain, but he smiles when Katherine waves on her way out the door.

The hallways are silent save for the hum of the fluorescent lights, and Katherine doesn't see anyone else as she walks along the rows of offices. Despite herself, she feels a little knot of unease in the pit of her stomach. Her uncle's worry must be wearing off on her.

He's been so protective of her since she came into his care, since her parents died in that blizzard, their car skidding off the road and into a ravine. It had been a miracle that her carseat had been flung clear, caught on the branches of a tree on the way down. Katherine, herself, takes it as a sign that she's naturally lucky, but her uncle seems to disagree.

She stops at the vending machines and fishes in her pockets for change. The snacks on offer are rather dull, and she finally settles on a granola bar with chocolate chips. She's just putting the coins into the slot, listening to each of them rattle their way down, when she notices a faint bluish glow reflected in the glass front of the machine. Katherine only has a moment to wonder what it might be before she realizes it's moving, heading straight toward her.

Katherine whirls, and finds herself nose-to-nose with a boy. He's about her height, about her age, and looks about as surprised as she feels. But most remarkably, he also throws a soft, almost spectral light. It doesn't seem to have one discernible source, at least not that Katherine can see; he simply _glows_.

She should be scared, she thinks. But she isn't. Katherine smiles, and the boy smiles back. And there is no way that anyone with such a bright and sweet and perfect smile could possibly be wicked.

Their eyes meet for only an instant before the boy skips lightly around her and – _flies!_ – away down the hall, but in that instant, Katherine is somehow sure that she's found a friend.

She looks back only once before she follows the boy, knowing how her uncle will worry if he finds out, but once he gets absorbed in his work he wouldn't notice if a bomb went off. And after all, reading about adventures is all very well, but it cannot possibly compare to the thrill of finding yourself in the middle of one.

…

Nightlight doesn't have time to stop and properly meet the strange girl who is neither Small nor Tall but something all her own. But he likes her smile; it's bright and brave and just a tiny bit rebellious. And in the instant that their eyes lock, before Nightlight hurries on his way, he knows he'll see her again.

He just hopes it will be in happier times.

…

Jack makes sure that the woman is comfortable, that her partners aren't hurt too badly, before he checks to see if the man called Bunny is all right. If Bunny was in the arena, then that means he's made of tougher stuff than the men in white. They break so much easier.

It takes Jack a moment to figure out where the plug that powers the computer display is. He pulls it out of the wall, there's a loud _pop_ and a shower of sparks from the last intact screen, and Bunny claws his way out of the wreckage with a growl. His shoulders are smoking, angry scorch marks livid against his bare chest, and the look in his bright green eyes is positively murderous.

"When I catch that sonofabitch -"

"Who _was_ that?" Jack asks. He's not entirely sure what just happened, but he thinks that finding out who the shadowy stranger is will give him most of the puzzle.

"Pitch Black," Bunny spits. Actually _spits_. "That crazy drongo was supposed ta be a Guardian, but he went rogue. Now he's got it in for the project and everyone in on it." He gives himself a shake, flexing his fingers and running a hand through his frazzled hair (fur? Jack's still not quite sure). "We beat 'im down ages ago, got 'im locked up. He shouldn't be back."

Jack nods. It makes sense. Something about the explanation bothers him, though, and it takes him a moment to pin it down.

"Why?" he asks, at last. "Why'd he do it?"

Bunny shrugs. He's sniffing at the air, paying special attention to the place where Pitch (hadn't he said that wasn't his name?) disappeared into the dark. "Who knows?" He scratches absently at one of the scorch marks on his shoulder. "More importantly, who cares? He's trying to kill us, that's all I need ta know."

This makes sense too, and Jack nods. Even though, if Pitch had been trying to kill them, wouldn't he have _done_ it, rather than asking Jack for his name, and running away just when he'd got Bunny down for the count? Even the man in white who'd been on the floor when Jack and Bunny had arrived is still breathing –

Jack's train of thought is abruptly interrupted by a moan from his right, reminding him that there are three others here with them. He spins around, to see the woman sitting up, gingerly touching the back of her head and wincing. When she sees Jack and Bunny, she lets out a high-pitched squeak of fright, shuffling backwards. "Security's on their way," she warns them, only the faintest quaver in her voice belying its fierceness.

"Hey, it's okay, you're safe now. We're not gonna hurt you," Jack hurriedly reassures her.

"What _happened_ here?" Bunny demands, and the woman wraps her arms around herself.

"That – he just appeared out of nowhere and smacked Dr. Whittaker halfway across the room when he set off the alarm. And then he tried to make us let him into the subject files. The computer exploded when he tried to force his way in and set off the security device, and then you two showed up."She's shivering a little, and Jack moves to drape his good arm around her comfortingly, before realizing that he'll only make her cold.

Bunny shakes his head. "Subject files? What does Pitch want with those?"

"He did say something about 'people to rescue'," Jack says, and the woman pipes up.

"Oh! When he couldn't get into the files, he wanted to know where he could find someone named Seraphina Pitchiner."

The name means nothing to Jack. Bunny echoes his sentiments. "Don't know the sheila." A smug grin paints itself across his face. "But I _do_ know where Pitch is going next."


	8. Chapter 8

Kozmotis stumbles out into the cell block and drops abruptly to his knees, legs collapsing under his own weight. All this shadow-travel is finally taking its toll. He's been running on fumes, powering through these little battles on nothing but adrenaline and sheer willpower, and now it's catching up to him.

He slumps heavily against the wall, hissing at the sudden bite of pain in his half-healed shoulder, and tries not to think about the cameras that must have seen his arrival, the alarms that have sent the entire facility into lockdown, the Guardians he doesn't doubt are on his tail. If he doesn't rest a moment now, he won't be able to get back up and keep pushing on when he absolutely has to.

Even if he could ignore all that, though, he couldn't block out the sounds.

It's been a long time since he was last held in the lower-security levels, and he's forgotten how noisy they could get. The inhuman noises are the easiest to ignore, the yaps and growls and hisses and roars and flaps of wings. It's the whimpers and the sobs and the whispers and the screams that drill right into his head, insisting on being heard. If this is how the researchers feel, it's no wonder that so many of the subjects end up muted.

Finally, Kozmotis pushes himself to his feet, leaning against the wall until he's sure his legs will support him. He's not yet back to full strength, but he doubts that will happen until he gets eight solid hours of sleep and a good meal, and that's unlikely to be anywhere in his near future. He'll just have to make the best of it. Besides, the fear that permeates this entire level is bracing, invigorating even. And he needs to get moving. He doesn't know exactly where on this level he'll find the control room.

And the Guardians will be catching up.

…

"You're a Guardian?"

Bunny shrugs. "Yeah. What's it to you?"

Jack shakes his head, laughs. "Oh, nothing, just that they put _me_ into the ring with a _Guardian_. No big deal." He waves towards the wall of screens showing the arena from different angles, the snow that's slowly beginning to melt. "It's not like you're the biggest badasses in the project, or anything." If there's an edge of bitterness in his voice then he's just as surprised as anyone else to hear it there.

"It was supposed to be the final trial," the woman in the white coat says, and Jack blinks at her. Her voice is still small and high and defiant, but she's uncurling a little, apparently deciding to trust them. Her mismatched eyes flick from Bunny back to Jack, and she gives him a tentative smile. "To determine whether you were a good candidate for further training."

"Further - ?" It hits Jack even as he starts to ask. "What – no, no way, I'm not Guardian material." He has no idea why the idea leaves such a sour taste on his tongue. Anyone else would be jumping at the chance, he's sure. He should be too. Isn't that why he's here?

_Is_ that why he's here?

Why _is_ he here?

"My thoughts exactly," Bunny says, snapping Jack out of his musings. "Which is why you're staying _here_ while I go get the others."

Jack rubs the back of his neck, presses his lips together in a mockery of deep thought. "What, and miss all the fun? Yeah, I don't think so, Cottontail."

"_What _did you just call me?"

Jack laughs again, and skips backwards, out of reach. "Oh, lighten up, it was just a joke."

"Very funny," Bunny growls. "See, this is why you'd never make it as a Guardian. If you can't be serious for five seconds in the middle of an attack -"

Jack cuts him off with a sweeping gesture towards the quiet (if thoroughly trashed) control room. His arm twinges faintly, and he reminds himself that while the bones might be knitting at their proper rate, it's still going to be tender for a few more hours. "Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize we were still under attack."

Bunny bares his teeth, leaning in uncomfortably close, and Jack leans away, refusing to give any more ground. "In case you hadn't noticed, this thing you just wandered into is a hell of a lot bigger than one little explosion."

He doesn't give Jack a chance to retort, reaching out with one clawed hand and – it looks like nothing so much as tearing through the air like a cheap painted backdrop, revealing another room on the other side. "I'm only saying this once. _Stay. Put_," he warns Jack, before stepping through the tear.

As if someone telling him what to do was ever going to change Jack's mind.

…

It's at the junction of two hallways, offices and white walls giving way to cold steel and clinical spotlessness, that Katherine realizes she's well and truly lost.

She's never been this far into the facility before, always sticking to the office block where her uncle does his work, shuttling back and forth between his office and his lab. She takes a moment to reflect that she doesn't actually know what it is that goes on in the rest of this sprawling, secretive building, what her uncle's painstakingly-crafted nanobots are actually used for. He's assured her that it's something to do with defense, that the project itself is very dangerous and not something that she would enjoy learning about.

She's always wondered about that. After all, there is very little that she doesn't enjoy learning about (although she's always liked stories best).

And now, it seems, Katherine will get her chance to see what exactly it is that she's been kept from finding out.

Up ahead, the glowing boy has stopped in his tracks, and Katherine ducks into an empty office to avoid being seen. She's quite sure, somehow, that the mysterious boy wouldn't mind her presence, but he might be angry about being followed without having been asked, or worse, he might be as overprotective as her uncle. Katherine really would not like to be sent back to sit around and read about programming when there's an adventure in progress right under her own nose.

She peers around the doorframe, and sees him staring intently at a patch of shadow cast against one wall. Katherine squints, trying to figure out what is so important about it. It might be a little darker than the others around it, but that's all that she can see.

And then the boy draws a dagger that catches his light like a funnel, lighting up the halls with such sudden fierce brightness that Katherine has to blink furiously to clear away the afterimages. When her vision returns, she sees that he's prodding at the shadows with the dagger, and they're _moving_ in response, not like ordinary shadows but more like something with far too many tentacles. The light only seems to make them blacker as they recoil and scurry away down the hall, towards the experimental halls.

The boy smiles triumphantly and sheathes the dagger again, shaking his head a little. Katherine wonders if it wouldn't be more use to him if he affixed it to a staff of sorts, and then realizes that he's moving again, flitting down the hall after the escaping shadows.

There's nothing to do but follow him.


	9. Chapter 9

Jack tumbles out through the rapidly-closing portal and lands flat on his back on an unfamiliar floor, staring up at a row of fluorescent lights. Before he can right himself, there's a knee pressed into his stomach and a blade against his throat. Jack freezes – both figuratively and literally, a fine film of frost spiraling out from under his outstretched hands – and tries not to swallow.

"What is this?" the dark-haired man pinning Jack down asks, and despite the seriousness in his voice, there's a sparkle of mirth in the depths of his bright blue eyes. "Bunny, I am thinking you have follower."

"What?"

There's a whir, and an iridescent blur overhead that resolves itself into the shape of a woman, wrapped in a suit of mail that shimmers like a hummingbird's chest. The whirring is coming from her wings, wings that are barely visible against the light and that slice through the air like knives. "Who are you? Why are you here? What -"

"Tooth! Enough with questions, give boy time to answer, da?"

"Frost?"

The winged woman backs away, letting Bunny in to lean intimidatingly over Jack's head. "Thought I told you to stay put," he grumbles, sounding exasperated. Jack offers a sheepish grin in return.

"Just couldn't stay away." He bats his lashes for effect, wringing a disgusted noise out of Bunny and a laugh from the other dark-haired man, who withdraws the sabre from Jack's throat.

"Wait, wait. You two know each other?" the winged woman asks, swerving in close to Bunny with a suspicious frown down at Jack. "Bunny, who -"

"Frost. Jack Frost," Jack answers, pushing himself up off the floor. The others tense, and he raises both hands, palms out, in the universal gesture of harmlessness. "Didn't mean to scare you."

"What are you doing here?" the woman called Tooth demands. Now that she's not in quite so constant motion and Jack can get a closer look, it looks less like she's wearing armour and more like its overlapping scales are part of her slender body, especially around the edges of her face where they blend into sleek, black hair. That suspicion is confirmed when the scales all flare as she darts forward, peering intently at his face, and suddenly she is all points and edges. "How did you find us? What do you want?"

"I followed Bunny? This Pitch guy showed up and trashed the control room in the middle of my Guardianship trial. Maybe I want a little payback." And perhaps he wants to know _why_, what Pitch is looking for and why he didn't try to hurt Jack and why he says that Pitch is not his name, but somehow Jack doesn't think that these are reasons that will endear him to Tooth.

"Pitch Black?" the dark-haired man asks, stroking his short beard thoughtfully, and a scowl darkens Tooth's heart-shaped face. "But Pitch is gone. We made very sure of that." By the way he hefts his sabre, Jack doesn't doubt it.

"Well, he's back. And picking up where he left off, if what just went down's any indication." Bunny gingerly rests a hand on Tooth's shoulder, and she unwinds slightly, her scales settling back into place.

"How do we know boy is not working with Pitch?" the bearded man asks, and Bunny frowns.

"You know what, North -" He stops, and give Jack a searching look that makes the pit of Jack's stomach feel like it's just dropping down to his toes. "We don't."

"What? I didn't even know the guy existed until ten minutes ago!"

Tooth bristles slightly at Jack's protest, but she doesn't say anything to him. Instead, she turns to someone behind Jack. "What can you see, Sandy? Is he on the level?"

Jack turns, to see the fourth Guardian shaking himself as though he's just woken from a deep sleep. He's unremarkable, a smallish, soft-looking figure with wild blonde hair and a dreamy expression. The only sign that he's anything but ordinary is the bright, buttery gold of his irises.

That gold swirls out to fill the universe and then just as quickly vanishes, leaving Jack feeling like he's just been hit with a full night's sleep travelling at a few thousand miles an hour, a gap in memory and a feeling of lost time that nags like a toothache in his brain. The man called Sandy nods, flashing two thumbs up and a huge grin in Jack's direction.

Tooth relaxes with a sigh, and the bearded man who Bunny'd called North sheathes his sabre, clapping Jack heartily on the back. It's all Jack can do not to be knocked right off his feet. "If Sandy says you are friend, then friend you are. Welcome, Frost, to Guardians!"

"Now wait a minute, North, just because he's not with Pitch doesn't mean he's a Guardian," Bunny protests, and North draws himself up, his warm smile turning steely.

"Frost. It was Guardianship trial Pitch interrupted, da?"

It takes Jack a moment to realise that North is talking to him. "Well, yeah, but I'm not -" Jack starts, but North cuts him off with a wave of one hand.

"There. You see? Frost is Guardian."

"Wait, no, I don't want -" Jack tries again. This time, it's not North but Tooth who cuts him off.

"Boys, I understand that this is very important but maybe right now isn't the best time? We don't know where Pitch is or what he's planning -"

"Nyet, is not true. We know he is planning blowing up of facilities."

"And he's looking for someone," Bunny finishes. "Which means -"

"He's down in the containment levels?" Tooth's delicate hands ball into fists. "Then that's where we're going."

…

This computer seems, at least, less inclined to explode at a wrongly-guessed password. Unfortunately, this does not make it any more forthcoming than the last computer Kozmotis tried to access. He snarls in frustration at the AI's melodious female voice impassively telling him that he doesn't have the clearance to access subject information. For the twelfth time. What was Einstein's definition of insanity, again?

Perhaps it's time to try something new.

He leans against the array of controls that surrounds the keyboard and shuts his eyes, taking a deep breath. And he listens.

The cacophony outside the tiny box of the control room is nothing to the symphony of terrified minds. They run from the sharp and urgent violin-stings of those newly-captured, still hopeful and so unknowing, to the dark slow cello-swell of those dreading the arrival of the next experiment. A whole host of smaller anxieties play a bright and bitter counterpoint, lives left behind, bodies wrenched out of familiarity, whether this pain will stop or that lover will worry or if someone is taking care of their pet. All the little worries that the mind latches onto when it can't quite comprehend the full horror of reality.

Kozmotis has to remind himself to take another breath.

It's always overwhelming, opening himself up like this, and as always there's the little spark of horror at how easy it is to get lost in the rush and the beauty of all that terror, the faint flicker of uncertainty that he'll be able to shove it all to the back of his mind again. He always has before, but there's always the possibility that this will be the time that he can't, that he will lose himself in the heady feeling and never find his way out again.

There isn't time for this now, though. He shoves his own fears to the side and sifts through the discordant strains, searching for a familiar note. Just a hint of sweetness, a terror that is all the deeper and more precipitous for the mask of reassurance it wears.

_But what if he _doesn't_ come find me?_

Kozmotis' eyes snap open.

It's faint, almost buried under the chorus ringing through the hall, but it's _there_. And it's coming from a cell at the end of the hall. He starts forward, before remembering that he has no way in. He's been on both sides of those cell doors, and even at his strongest he's never been able to break them down. And right now, he might be able to get himself in and out through darkness, but definitely not anyone else.

He swallows down a curse when the shadows around the control room shiver and convulse with warning. Someone's tripped the wards; he's about to have company. It's too damn soon, all he needs is a little more time –

He spots the bright red button marked 'Emergency Release', sitting innocently in the middle of the control panel, at the same instant that the door bursts open.


	10. Chapter 10

Katherine hears it before she can see it. There's a clamour, a commotion, a howl of voices echoing down the halls. It's a haunting, painful sound that stops her in her tracks.

"What -" she exclaims, before clapping a hand over her mouth. It's too late though; the damage is done. The spectral boy pulls up short in midair, whirling around to face her. Katherine can't read anything but wary surprise on his face.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have…" she starts, but trails off when the boy's face splits into a bright, broad grin. Katherine exhales a long sigh of relief when he waves her over, and gladly hurries up to join him at the end of the hall.

"Hello, I'm Katherine," she says, feeling a little silly. She thrusts out a hand, and feels far sillier when the boy only cocks his head to one side and looks at it quizzically. His apparent confusion doesn't last long, though, before he smiles and takes her hand in both of his.

"Nightlight," he says, and his voice is like wind chimes on a clear night, a baby's first delighted laugh, moonlight made sound. Katherine's sure her cheeks are cherry-red.

"That's your name?" she asks, and he nods, releasing her hand. She tucks it quickly behind her back, turning to the end of the hall to conceal the small and secret smile that threatens to become a large and open one.

The hall ends in a huge metal door, sealed with a wheel like a vault. The display on a keypad beside the door blinks red. It seems darker here, and it isn't until the boy frowns at a shadow on the wall and it curls away under the door that Katherine realizes she isn't just imagining it.

The noises are coming from the other side of the door.

"What _is_ this place?" she asks, in a hushed voice. Somehow, it seems very important to whisper.

The boy looks at her with a serious expression, one that seems strange on his usually lively, laughing face.

"Are we going in there?"

The boy – Nightlight – nods again, before flitting up to the wheel sealing the door shut. It refuses to turn, despite his best efforts.

"Wait," Katherine says, hurrying over to the keypad. She punches in her uncle's access code, the one she technically shouldn't know. The display flashes green, and the wheel turns, the whole door swinging open in slow, ominous silence.

The hall on the other side is cinderblock and concrete, lined with doors only slightly less imposing than the one that had blocked it off. More halls branch off every few feet, and Katherine has no doubt that it would be all too easy to get lost in the labyrinth and never find her way out again.

"It looks like a _prison_," she whispers, and Nightlight makes a face. He looks quickly from left to right, then back over his shoulder, before darting forwards into the maze. The shadows curl away from him, just as they did in the hall before, and he waves cheerily for Katherine to follow him before turning around a corner and out of sight. His glow is visible for a few moments more before it, too, vanishes.

Katherine swallows hard, remembering something she thinks she read once: the thing about adventures is that you never know how big they're going to be until you're right in the middle of one.

She takes a deep breath, squares her shoulders, and hurries after Nightlight.

…

_Help him_, his Man of Moon has said. It would be far less difficult, Nightlight reflects, if he knew what the Dark One was trying to _do_.

He considers helping to fight off the four who beset the Dark One, but that plan he quickly dismisses. This is not the kind of help he is best suited to, and besides, he rather likes all four of them. Nightlight doesn't recognize the pale boy who has joined the Guardians, but he, too, looks like fun. Fighting against them, on the other hand, would _not_ be.

His problem is solved when he notices the button that the Dark One keeps turning back to. Now, _there_ is something that Nightlight can help with.

He slips into the small and hotly-contested room as little more than a beam of blue light and a laugh that goes unheard over the shouts, ringing in the air.

…

It's once she goes around the first bend that Katherine hears the shouts, and the ringing crash of metal.

Katherine gets so caught up in trying to make out what's being said through the cacophony coming from the cells that she nearly trips over something large and soft and bulky. She looks down, and claps both hands over her mouth to keep from crying out when she realizes that it's a body. It's dressed in the uniform of one of the guards who work at the compound, and she wonders for a second whether it's anyone she knows. In the end, she can't bring herself to look, and runs after Nightlight's retreating glow instead.

This doesn't seem like it's going to be quite the adventure she'd been hoping for.

"Don't you _dare_ open those doors!"

The voice that shouts from around the next corner is sweet and feminine, but Katherine thinks it would be a very big mistake to assume the speaker is weak because of this.

"We don't have to be enemies," another voice says, a note of pleading in its dark and faintly-accented voice.

"Think _you_ were the one who made us enemies when you tried to blow us all to hell the _first_ time," a third voice interjects. Katherine can't help but think that this is how an angry wolverine might sound, if it could speak.

She edges around the corner, peering cautiously around before she ventures out into the hall. The body she tripped over earlier floats back to the top of her mind, and she shudders.

A door is hanging open at the end of the hall, not one of the massive cell doors but a far more ordinary-looking one. A group of people are clustered around it, people like nothing Katherine has ever seen in her waking hours. And inside the room -

The darkness is so thick that it can't possibly be natural. Shadows writhe and curl at the edges like a living thing trying to escape, held at bay by the man with two swords and a coat the colour of blood, and the boy who looks as though something's leached all the colour out of him. Within the room, a faint golden glow curls through the air and glints off of the wings of the woman in bright armour and the claws of the darker man as they tear through shadows like paper.

"_Fine_," the second voice hisses out of the impossible dark. "I suppose it was too much to hope that someone might actually _listen_ for once."

The pale boy stiffens at that, taking one small step backwards. He moves lightly, as though he has only a passing acquaintance with gravity, and Katherine suddenly wonders where her lighter-than-air boy has gone to. She hasn't seen so much as the faintest glimmer of Nightlight's glow in what feels like far too long.

"But if it's an enemy you want," the voice in the dark continues, and there's an edge to it that has Katherine looking around for anything that might serve as a weapon, "then it's an enemy you'll get."

There's a shout, from five voices at once, and a burst of white light, just as a siren howls into life directly above Katherine's head. She claps both her hands over her ears, screwing her eyes shut against the lights that flash brilliant red in time with the siren's shrieks.

That's why she doesn't notice until it's almost too late that the doors lining the hall are all sliding open.

…

Kozmotis sidesteps out of the way of one of the hummingbird's razor-edged wings, falling into range of the rabbit's claws and having to leave his right side unguarded in order to throw up a hasty shadow-shield. He can't keep this up, he knows; his chances of escape are dwindling with each second that this fight goes on. And what's worse, it's drawing him away from the emergency release and what may be his best chance at rescuing his daughter. He's under no illusions that he'll ever get another opportunity like this one, not now they know what he's after.

And then, there's a flash of blinding white light.

The Guardians are all unprepared; they've expected him to attack with shadows, and they all recoil at the sudden brightness. It's only for an instant, but it's long enough for Kozmotis to recognize a figure in the middle of the glow, that of the slight, spectral boy who he thought he'd left behind him along with the enigmatic Mr. Moon. He tenses, prepared for another painful encounter with that damnable diamond dagger, but instead, the boy pauses in front of the control panel, and with a last burst of radiance, scatters apart into so many moonbeams.

Kozmotis doesn't even have time to be puzzled before the wail of a siren blares out of speakers around the room. The bird looks wildly around, and the rabbit flings up both arms to cover his ears. It takes a moment for Kozmotis to realise what else has changed. The cacophony from the cells has ceased completely. Apart from the shrieking siren, all is dead silent.

And all along the hall, the doors are sliding ponderously open.

For a split second, no one and nothing moves. Then, as though a spell has broken, the prisoners flood out into the hall. It's chaos, gloriously busy, noisy, crowded chaos, and to make it even better, a few of the subjects seem to harbour a grudge against the Guardians. Kozmotis ducks a flare of brilliant purple light that misses the hummingbird by inches, burning a sizzling hole into the wall behind her, and slips away into the crowd.

At least, that's his plan. Its execution is hampered slightly by the sudden appearance of something knife-sharp and icy, pressed into his lower back. It wouldn't kill him if the wielder decided to drive the blade – if a blade is what it is – forward, but he would be seriously inconvenienced.

Kozmotis freezes in place. "I see you've chosen a side."

The voice from behind him is low and full of threat, which Kozmotis doesn't doubt the boy could make good on. The slight note of uncertainty is new, however. "Don't move."

"Believe me, I have no intention of doing so."

"Why are you doing this?" Jack demands, and Kozmotis can't help but be impressed. The Guardians don't ask _why_. They don't question their enemies' motives. They don't question their orders. They don't question _anything_. They're conditioned not to. Who _is_ this boy? "What do you want?"

"I could ask the same of you," Kozmotis answers softly. "What is it that you want, Jack?"

The point held to his back wavers, ever so slightly. "I – I don't -"

"Jack!"

It's a little girl's voice, high and scared and excited and breathless and _not Sera's_. Kozmotis barely notices the clatter as Jack drops whatever weapon he'd been holding through the sudden rush of despair that threatens to overwhelm him. Her fear is so familiar, even as it disappears rapidly under happiness and relief. Her protector is here, he'd come for her after all.

_Not Seraphina_.

"What -" There's an edge of panic to Jack's voice, and Kozmotis risks turning around. The boy seems to have forgotten him completely, searching the crowd for any sign of the voice's owner.

"Jack!" She's farther away, now, still obscured by the crowd.

"No, wait!" Jack takes to the air without so much as a glance behind him, and Kozmotis forcibly quells his curiosity. It doesn't matter. Seraphina isn't here. What matters right now is getting away, out of immediate danger, so that he can _think_. So that he can find her.

He turns, with purpose, and finds himself looking down into the sweet, rather plump face of the quietest, most restrained, and quite probably most dangerous of the Guardians.

"Sandy," Kozmotis breathes, taking an involuntary step back. He looks up, away, but it's too late; he's already met the smaller man's eyes. Gold fills the edges of his vision, his limbs turning sluggish, the shadows slipping out of his grasp.

He could swear he hears a voice, on the very edge of consciousness, whispering _sweet dreams,_ before everything goes dark.


	11. Chapter 11

Kozmotis wakes up.

For a second, he doesn't know where he is, before the confused impression of fighting and shouting and running out of time fades, leaving him alone, in his bedroom, in the dark. He groans, and presses a hand over his eyes. No matter what he does, the dreams keep coming. They're never the same twice, but they're _always_ the same; desert heat, the familiar weight of fatigues and a pack on his back, the familiar weight of a gun in his hands. Screams. Running. Gunfire. In other words, the usual. Seraphina wants him to visit a therapist, but what would he say? That he has _nightmares_? After everything, he thinks he's pretty lucky he's escaped with such trivial damage.

And perhaps it's selfish, but part of him doesn't want to give up what sometimes feels like the last proof that it was all real, that he hadn't imagined it. Medals and commendations are all very well, but they belong to this bright, cheerful, aggressively _normal_ world where someone getting shot is a tragedy, rather than part of the daily routine.

There's a faint noise from somewhere on the other side of his bedroom door, and the thought of Seraphina catches in his mind, followed by a bloom of dark dread like ink blown through water. She's _fine_, he knows she is, but he still throws back the covers and pads across the room in his bare feet. He'll feel better if he checks on her. He'll sleep better knowing she's sleeping well. That's all.

He opens the door into black nothingness.

For a moment, he can't understand what he's seeing. He steps forward, expecting to feel the softness of the hall carpet underfoot, but instead his feet touch cold laminate flooring. He freezes in place, trying to undo the suspicion that trickles uncomfortably in, but it's far too late. The dam bursts, the memories flood back, and the house around him dissolves into darkness.

The shadows that surround him whisper and snicker but they won't answer his calls, won't obey his commands no matter what he tries. There's a sudden shifting sound from behind him, and Kozmotis spins, trying to make out anything against the all-consuming dark. He can't see anything, and the soft noises that follow are impossible to place. Out of desperation, he listens closely for any echo of fear, any hint of worry or anxiety or discomfort, but gets…nothing. Not just the nothing of having no one around, either. It's as though his strange sixth sense has been abruptly muffled, cut off as though it never were, and for reasons he can't quite explain, this is almost more frightening than everything else put together.

He tries one more time to bend the shadows to his will, and this time, he gets a response. Not, however, the one he was looking for. A low, rich, sinister laugh echoes out of the surrounding blackness, seemingly without a source, and a voice says, "My, my, you really have let yourself go native, haven't you, General?"

…

It's chaos.

Katherine just manages to avoid getting her head taken off by something winged and screaming, by nearly running full-tilt into a figure with a boar's head and serious anger management issues. She slides sideways, out of the way of the boar-minotaur, and slams bodily into someone taller than her by at least three feet, someone silvery-gray as willow bark. They look down at her, and their eyes are _on fire_.

Katherine bites her bottom lip, knowing that it would be both rude and dangerous to scream, no matter how much she wants to. She takes two slow steps backwards, and someone, running past, knocks into her, sending her spinning nearly off her feet.

There are people, everywhere, even if it seems to be stretching the definition of 'people' to apply it to some of the figures filling these halls. Most of them seem as panicked as she does, and a few fights have broken out, fights marked by bursts of light and howls like a whole book of fairy tales' worth of wolves. Katherine looks around, above and below, but she can see no sign of her odd, glowing boy in the crush.

She turns back towards the way she came, hoping to follow the general direction of the crowd and find her way back to the door, but it isn't long before she finds her passage blocked. No one is moving forward, and in fact quite a lot of people seem to be hurrying back deeper into the maze of hallways and cells. Katherine, being rather small and slight, has little trouble slipping through the crowd against the stream – at first. As she draws nearer the door, however, the shouts and the sirens and the sound of pounding feet grow louder and louder, until she turns the corner into the main hallway and stops, frozen, in her tracks.

It's hard to tell, through the press of bodies in the way, but she's certain that she sees flashes of familiar faces, familiar blue uniforms, entirely unfamiliar and fearsome-looking weaponry. The alarms have done their job, drawing a veritable army of guards down to the tangle of halls and the chaos within. Katherine thinks she catches a glimpse of Sascha, staring down a winged figure darting towards her with its talons outstretched, before the crowd presses in around her again and the line of guards vanishes from view.

This is not good. This is, in fact, about as bad as it can get. Suddenly, her uncle's ridiculous worries don't seem quite so ridiculous anymore.

Katherine bites her lip and slips back around the corner, into the hallway she came from. She steps on someone's toe – or possibly hoof – and bites back a yelp, calling an apology back over her shoulder instead as she hurries back deeper into the maze. Where on earth has Nightlight gone to? What _has_ she stumbled into? And more importantly, how can she stumble _out_ again?

"Jack!"

The sound of a little girl's voice cuts through the hubbub like a knife. Katherine's not quite sure why this one shout stands out above all the rest. Perhaps it's the pitch, clear and high against a backdrop of growls and thundering megaphone proclamations as the guards try to restore order. Perhaps it's the desperation etched into that one-syllable name. Perhaps it's only the fact that the screaming girl is passing by mere feet away.

Whatever the reason, the cry catches Katherine's attention, and because of it, she notices the little knot of children hurrying down the hall across from her. None of them can be older than ten, and there's one little blonde girl who must only be about three or four. The fairy wings that she wears, wings that Katherine had taken at first for a costume of some sort, leave a wave of glitter in the air when they flutter and lift the girl ever so slightly off of her feet.

As soon as Katherine sees it, she realizes that almost none of them are untouched, and her stomach twists. It only lasts for a second, but it leaves her feeling like the wind's been knocked out of her nonetheless. The dark-haired boy who seems to be the leader is glowing, not like Nightlight's faint, constant moonbeam-brightness, but with flaring golden light that pulses from his eyes seemingly at random. It leaves trails in the air that Katherine thinks at first are afterimages, and forms a sparking halo around each of his fists. The girl at his side turns slightly, and reveals a spiral horn protruding from the very centre of her forehead, both whimsical and wickedly sharp.

She only sees their faces in bits and pieces, but she recognizes the girl who'd screamed in an instant. Her eyes are wide, stark terror written into the lines of her face, and where the others only look back in wary apprehension, her eyes are turned to the hallway behind her in hopeful anticipation.

Katherine isn't quite sure why she follows them.

…

Nightlight watches the Dark One fall, collapsing into an ungraceful heap, and thinks that perhaps he ought not to meet the smallish, roundish Tall One's eyes.

It's far harder to cross swords with someone when meeting their gaze will quickly put an end to any battle, but Nightlight's task is made easier by the fact that the Tall One (who hardly deserves the title, as he only comes up about to Nightlight's chin) does not actually have a sword to cross. Nightlight is thankful, too, that the small Tall One does not expect him.

The smallish Tall One kneels down, looking over the Dark One, and the oddest feeling comes over Nightlight. It's not quite sadness, but he isn't glad to see the Dark One lying defeated and helpless, as he'd thought he might be. It almost comes as a relief to remember what his Man of Moon has asked of him, and to step in when the smallish Tall One reaches out for the Dark One.

Nightlight pours all of his strength and his most brilliant glow into the crystal dagger for the merest sliver of a second, sending out a single blinding flare that leaves the smallish Tall One blinking those dangerous eyes shut. In the brief respite this buys him, Nightlight tries unsuccessfully to shake the Dark One back to wakefulness. He gets only the faintest of moans in response. Whatever dream has fallen on the Dark One must be a deep one.

Nightlight huffs out a breath, blowing a single snowy curl from his face, and lifts the Dark One in a quick, measured movement. He slings the tall figure across his shoulders, just as he'd done when his Man of Moon had bid him bring the Dark One back, heedless of trailing limbs or bumped heads. Speed is more important.

In another flash, they are both gone.


	12. Chapter 12

Nightlight nearly falls out of the air when he spots a head of auburn hair, a small white face with a look of worry, bobbing amongst the sea of unfamiliar faces. _Katherine!_ He'd almost forgotten she'd followed him, had thought she must have turned back when she saw the fighting. Of course she hadn't, he thinks. No one with so bright and brave a smile would ever run from something that frightened her, not when it was for a friend.

He blinks at that thought, and then decides that yes, Katherine _is_ already his friend. The idea brings a smile to his face, but only for a moment, before it curves down into a thoughtful frown. She hadn't had any kind of weapon, had she? Katherine is bright, and brave, but she is also still between Small and Tall and what if something harms her? What if she can't find her way back? After all, she isn't quite as talented as Nightlight is. What if she gets into a fight? What if -

He hesitates only for a moment, torn between his duty and the one he feels truly needs him. But in the end, there really can be no contest. Nightlight will always, always take care of his Man of Moon, as he knows, dimly, he was charged to long ago, by a Tall man and woman with kind smiles. And his Man of Moon has asked this of him, to follow the Dark One and help him find whatever it is he's looking for in the computers and locked places and –

The answer is like a flash of blinding light.

Katherine can help! Katherine has the key that opened the lock on these halls, that almost surely will open more. There is no difficult decision to be made at all.

Feeling rather pleased with himself, Nightlight settles the Dark One in a cell, on an untrustworthy-looking metal bed, out of the way and out of sight of the ones set against him, the group of talented Tall Ones with the odd name. Guardians. What, Nightlight wonders, are they guarding?

He looks left, looks right, and then flickers back out to go and fetch Katherine.

…

As the little group draws closer to the doors, Katherine finally gets close enough to hear snippets of their conversation over the general noise. The boy who seems to be the leader, the one whose eyes blaze with golden light, is giving instructions to the others, his boyish voice sounding far more serious than it has any right to.

"- on point, and Cupcake, you and I will be clearing a way through. Pippa, Monty, if anything goes wrong, you two are gonna have to get Emma and Sophie out of the way, okay?"

The tall girl with the reddish hair says something, but it's lost in a roar and the crackle of something breaking. Katherine winces at the sound even as she tries to slip between two huge, shaggy-coated figures. She's not quite sure why she's so intent on getting close to the little group, but something tells her that it's important, and even if she isn't exactly an adult herself, she still can hardly bear to see such small children alone in this situation. Besides, there must be something she can do, even if she isn't quite sure what's going on. She knows the guards well, after all. Certainly she can help _somehow_.

"It's not a test," the boy who must be the leader is saying when Katherine approaches, but the fear on the red-haired girl's face proves she doesn't believe him. "This is the chance we've been waiting for, okay? We're getting out of here. _All_ of us."

Katherine steps forward, about to ask if there is anything she can do or any help she can offer, but she's interrupted by another boy, one of the twins. His voice is tense, and Katherine would giggle at the earnestness with which he throws around a fighter pilot's terms if he weren't so serious. "Jamie, we got a bogey at two o'clock and he's coming in fast."

The boy called Jamie's mouth sets into a line, and the light that fills his eyes pulses once, wildly, so bright that Katherine finds herself blinking away afterimages. "Are you sure we're the target?"

"Positive."

Katherine looks up, following his pointing finger, but only catches a glimpse of white, flashing past somewhere near the ceiling. She thinks again of Nightlight, and her heart leaps into her throat.

She isn't the only one. The girl who had screamed is looking up with eyes wide as dinner plates, and when Jamie says, "Back me up. I'll take care of this," she screams again.

"No!"

The boy called Jamie either doesn't listen or doesn't hear her, his brilliant light expanding to cocoon him in a radiance that looks both beautiful and deadly before he is airborne, streaking up to meet the oncoming threat. There's no way he could hear what the dark-haired girl shouts, flinging herself forward out of the grasp of the scrawny blond boy who tries to hold her back. But Katherine does, and the words twist painfully in her heart.

"That's my brother!"

Katherine turns away from the fight just in time to see the dark-haired girl bolt away from the group, towards the bright flashes and flickers that mark the location of the skirmish. The blond boy scrambles after her, and the red-haired girl waves her hands and a shimmering soap-bubble wall appears out of thin air, falling just short of catching the fugitive but arising just in time for the blond boy to run headlong into it. He's bounced back, to land at the tall girl's feet.

Katherine doesn't see what happens next. She's already running after the dark-haired girl, bumping into people in her haste. Something slithers across the floor in front of her and she trips, throwing up both arms in a vain attempt to catch herself as she crashes to the floor.

When Katherine picks herself back up, the little girl has stopped running. She's frozen a scant few feet away, standing stock-still staring up into the barrel of a rifle.

The guard holding the gun looks vaguely familiar to Katherine, but she can't quite place him. If they've met before, it was only once. He looks almost as surprised as the little girl does, but that doesn't last long. The girl holds out both hands, and the air between them shimmers like the air above hot pavement. The guard shouts, raising the gun more like a bat than a rifle, and Katherine scrambles to her feet and runs forward before she even really knows she's going to. Everyone else is too far away, they won't get there in time –

There's a flare of blinding blue light and an answering blaze of gold, a short sharp shower of hail, and Katherine slides in between the guard and the small girl just in time to intercept his blow. The stock of the rifle smashes into the side of her head with a sick-sounding _crack_, knocking her clear off her feet, and Katherine has just enough time to think _oh, I'm falling_ before the brilliant starburst of pain catches up with her. She barely notices the dull throb through her arm and her hip when she hits the floor through the bright, sharp lightning-forks of pain just above her ear. She manages to push herself up, blinking furiously to try to clear her vision of the pulses of coloured light that flash in front of her eyes, only to see the small girl scrambling backwards even as the guard raises the gun again, steadying for another swing.

Before Katherine can make a move or even a sound, something arrests the guard's hand in midair. He twitches, once, and then looks down slowly at the seeping red stain spreading across the front of his crisp uniform shirt, the inches of sharpened steel that protrude from his chest in the centre of that spreading stain.

A voice, heavy with accent and good-natured joviality, says, "Did your mama never tell you not to be hitting little girls?"

The guard opens his mouth but only a bubble comes out, red-flecked and shimmering for an instant before it pops. Katherine pushes herself to her feet, wincing at the pain in her head, and reaches out to pull the still-frozen girl out of the way as the guard's body topples silently forward to reveal their rescuer.

She recognizes him only after a long moment as the man in he blood-red coat she saw battling shadows. He's not so very old, as adults go, though his dark moustache and trim little beard are far thicker than those of most of the young men Katherine knows. He wears a devilish grin and the aforementioned coat, and in each hand brandishes a sabre, one of which is still slick with the guard's blood. Katherine's eyes keep darting back to it, some awful gravity in that wash of red pulling her back no matter how much she wants to look away.

The man follows her gaze, and grimaces, kneeling down to wipe the blade clean on the fallen guard's shirt. "Much better," he pronounces, tucking the sabres into his belt and straightening up, holding out his right hand. "You are not hurt?"

The dark-haired girl mutely shakes her head no, her eyes wide and frightened. Katherine tries to answer, but all that comes out is a squeak. She clears her throat and tries again. "My head, a bit, but I'm all right." The questions that crowd to the forefront of her mind all demand to be asked at once, but the ensuing confusion renders her unable to ask anything at all.

The man shakes his head, the alternating flickers of gold and blue light from above casting odd, dancing shadows on his face. "So brave and so small a girl should not be weaponless," he states confidently, and reaches down for the guard's dropped gun. Katherine half-expects him to hand it to her, but instead he peers at it intently for a moment, before a thoughtful frown crosses his face and the gun begins to _change_ in his hands. Bits and parts clatter out of the casing, gears and wheels and small metallic things, clicking together into a new and unfamiliar shape.

Even the dark-haired girl seems to forget her distress for a moment, watching the thing in the man's hands take shape. He glowers at it for a moment, before a look of dawning realization lights his face and he reaches down to pull a small knife from his boot. The clattering, rotating metal contraption latches onto the knife immediately, coiling itself around the hilt and settling into place with a noise almost like a sigh. With a smile and a flourish, the man holds the finished product out to Katherine.

"But – I don't know how to -" she starts, and the man laughs, deep and hearty and booming.

"No need to know how! This knife, it will defend you. Is not so wise to run into adventures unarmed."

Katherine isn't quite sure what to make of this, but it does make a kind of sense. And with the last sentence, she decides to trust him. She reaches out and, with only a moment's hesitation, takes the knife. The hilt shifts slightly under her hand, settling into a more comfortable shape.

"Emma!"

The voice belongs to the girl called Pippa, and it's raw with panic. She hurries over, the boy called Monty trailing behind her, and crouches beside the dark-haired girl. "Oh my god, are you okay? We, uh, got stuck in my bubble or we would've -"

There's an especially blazing burst of blue that throws everyone into stark relief, and the air goes cold. That's all the warning they get before a boy, slim and silver-haired with bruised shadows ringing his eyes and a look of panic on his face, drops seemingly out of thin air and lands, stumbling, beside the bearded man.

"Frost?" the man asks, and the boy smiles painfully, straightening up.

"Jack!" the dark-haired girl called Emma shouts, darting forward. The boy's smile turns warm, and he turns to face her as she opens her arms, as though asking for a hug.

And that's when a beam of golden light slams into him with deceptive force and throws him back.

"Jack!" Emma screams again, and starts to run towards him, but Pippa catches her around the waist and pulls her back, wrapping them both in a shimmering force field. "No! Leave him alone!"

There's a crackling sound, and Katherine looks down to see a fine layer of ice creeping stealthily across the floor towards her, turning red around the body on the floor where it mingles with the pool of blood around him. She steps warily backwards, and another flaring golden strike tears up the floor only feet from where she stands, leaving a long trench in the floor about half as deep as she is tall.

Katherine gasps, taking another step back, and someone grabs her wrist. She whirls, the knife coming up almost of its own accord, but her scream dies on her lips when she sees who it is. "Nightlight!"

He glances over her shoulder, at the bearded man, and raises a finger to his lips. Katherine nods, looking back as well, just in time to see the boy called Jamie, wreathed in light and almost too bright to look at, touch down lightly and hurry over to where Pippa and Emma are crouched. They're safe, but she has an uneasy feeling that this isn't the last she's going to see of them.

Nightlight tugs at her wrist, and Katherine turns and lets him pull her away.

* * *

AN: A thousand apologies for taking so long with this! I was unexpectedly deprived of internet access, and have only just recovered it. Hopefully it won't go disappearing on me again.


	13. Chapter 13

The world lurches sickeningly, and Kozmotis spins, swinging blindly at nothing. Logically, he knows it's futile; the voice that even now fills the darkness with mocking laughter, long and loud, is sourceless and directionless, appearing from every shadow at once. There is something familiar about the laughter, he thinks, but he can't place it, twisted almost unrecognizable as it is with malice and wicked glee.

"What is this? Another trap?" Dimly he remembers gold, and darkness overwhelming his vision, but before that his memory seems strangely fuzzy. "I'm not going back to being a lab rat, if that's what you want. And neither are those poor people -" he starts, but the voice from the shadows cuts him off, its tone reproaching.

"Are you really still claiming all this violence is in the name of _freedom_? I'm disappointed in you. I would have thought that at least here, in the dark, you'd admit the truth."

"And what's that?" Kozmotis asks, warily, still turning as he tries to pinpoint the location of the voice by sound alone. It really has been too long; he's become too used to his new abilities, relies far too much on them, and the challenge of having just his own body and his own senses to work with would almost be refreshing, if he weren't somehow certain that he is in terrible danger.

The voice laughs again, this time emerging from the shadows somewhere just behind Kozmotis' right shoulder. He spins, but no one is there. "That you simply _love_ to hear them scream."

"You're wrong," Kozmotis says, shortly. He shouldn't have, he knows as soon as the words escape him. It's simple psychological warfare. Dammit, he's _better_ than this, he shouldn't be letting a few words get to him.

"Oh?" the voice purrs, and this time Kozmotis could swear it's coming from directly in front of him. But that makes no sense, there is _nothing there_ – "Is that why you put so much effort into terrorizing those useless lab assistants? You didn't _really_ think they knew anything, did you?"

Kozmotis lunges forward, his fists meeting nothing but the slight, dreamlike resistance of shadows, and the voice croons tauntingly into his left ear, "Is that why you tore those guards to shreds?"

He tastes blood, the salty, metallic tang of pain and fear and memory balled into one as he bites almost through his tongue. His swing is wild, sloppy, and he nearly falls forward under his own momentum when, once again, there is nothing there to hit.

"Is this how you solve all of your problems?" the voice asks, and now it sounds bored.

Kozmotis bites back a retort, digging his nails into the palms of his hands as he turns slowly, still searching for any sign of his opponent. "Would you like to _see_ how I solve my problems?" he says, darkly, and the voice's laugh sounds utterly delighted.

"My, my, my. Crude and impotent threats, now? I must say, I really expected better of you." The shadows rustle, the darkness _moves_, swirling around him like a wave. "After you showed _such_ promise in these last few trials, such an admirable lack of compunction when it comes to slaughter – they really have trained you well, haven't they? Or were you simply always this bloodthirsty?"

"_Who the hell are you_?" Kozmotis demands. His heart is hammering against his chest, now, and he isn't sure if he's grateful for the quicksilver slivers of dread that impale his spine and check his anger, or if he wants to let rage swallow him and feel no more fear.

The only answer he gets is an amused, thoughtful hum. "I could ask you the same question. Look at you! Parading around like a _hero_, claiming that all you want is to save the poor, innocent victims of the atrocities committed by the _monsters_ who run the program…but you and I know the truth, don't we, General?"

Kozmotis grits his teeth, refusing to rise to the bait. "What's the _truth_, then?"

The darkness is filled, just for a moment, with thousands of pinpricks of light, tiny pairs of eyes blinking open and shut again just as quickly. Only one pair remains, level with his, flashing with an almost-metallic flicker as a smile appears just below them, curving wickedly upwards.

"Why, who is the _real_ monster, of course."

The darkness begins to melt away, revealing a face, a figure, just as Kozmotis finally realizes why the voice sounds so familiar.

It's his own.

And the grinning figure that emerges from the dark, that throws back its head and laughs at the look on Kozmotis' face, is bordered by the gilt frame of a full-length mirror.

He throws himself forward with a scream that is mostly rage, and for once his fists _meet_ something that offers resistance. But it's no good, even the sharp shattering sounds of glass can't drown out the laughter, it's everywhere, it's in his _head_ –

He bolts awake, to find a knife held in his face.

…

Jack blinks open his eyes, and isn't met with the familiar sight of the ceiling of his small room, or the overhead lights of the arena. His head throbs in time to the pulsing of the fluorescent lights above him, and something tells him they aren't really pulsing, but that that, too, is in his head.

"Frost?"

Jack tries to sit up, and promptly decides against it. He waves one arm, waiting for the world to stop spinning. " 'M okay."

"Good." Tooth's head fills Jack's field of vision, fury and worry battling for dominance of her sweet features. "What have you been _doing_? Pitch got away, something's wrong with Sandy, Bunny's -" Her voice catches, just slightly, before she resumes her panicky lecture. "Bunny's hurt, it's not good, it's going to take at _least_ an hour to get him back on his feet – and _you_!" She draws back, so quickly that she seems to vanish, and Jack tries again to sit up. "Frost I can understand, he's _not_ trained as a Guardian, he doesn't know how we operate but honestly, North, I expected better of you at least! We don't go to pieces just because a plan goes wrong!"

"There were children in danger," North says, matter-of-factly, from somewhere outside of Jack's field of vision. He obviously sees it as a reasonable explanation.

Tooth doesn't seem to share his viewpoint. "Your _teammates_ were in danger -"

"Forgive me for believing you could take care of yourself. Next time, I will watch over you like porcelain doll."

"_North!_"

Jack tunes out their argument, testing whether or not he can get up without falling back down instead. It takes a few tries, but eventually he makes it to his feet.

The girl who'd known his name is gone. So is the boy who'd put him out. So, it seems, is everyone else. Jack scans the hall, noticing the occasional stain (not always red) and scorch mark, and wonders just how long he's been insensible. The painful burns all along his front seem to have healed over, but when he gingerly tests the skin over the places where the light had seared him, it's still tender. It can't have been long, then, even if the total absence of anyone else seems to say otherwise.

Maybe there's still a chance he can catch up with the girl. Maybe she hasn't gotten too far. Maybe…

"What happened?" Jack asks, and Tooth stops mid-shout.

"Oh no." Her expression shifts from murderous to concerned in seconds, and she flits over to him, leaving North looking slightly dumbfounded at the abrupt lack of yelling. "Did he take a blow to the head? Do you remember your name? Where you are?" She's right in his face, staring into his eyes, and Jack tries to back away before he realises she must be checking the size of his pupils.

"Yeah, I remember everything right up to that little girl coming running at me…and then taking that hit." He winces, and rubs at a tender spot above his heart. "What I _don't_ know is what happened to everybody. Wasn't this place practically a war zone?"

Tooth pulls away, her wings fluttering agitatedly, and she turns back to North. "We weren't prepared. And if _we_ weren't prepared, you can imagine how much luck the guards had."

Jack can't hold back the wince, even though the twinge from his battered ribs instantly makes him regret it. "Ow! And, ow. I'm guessing they didn't come out on top, then."

"No." North pats the sabre hanging at his side as though he doesn't even realise he's doing it. "And of course they did not think to close doors behind them." He shakes his head. "Before you ask again what I have been doing, Tooth, Pitch must have fled with other subjects. There is no sign of him in cells or with the dead."

"You've been through them _all_? Already?" Tooth doesn't give him time to answer. "Nevermind, it doesn't matter. Bunny's _hurt -_"

"So is Frost," North says, matter-of-factly, and Jack raises both hands.

"Whoa, no. Don't drag me into this."

Tooth spares him only the briefest of glances. "That's not all. Something's wrong with Sandy. Really wrong. I know sometimes he gets a bit odd coming out of someone's head but – North, I think he tried oneiropathy on Pitch." This last is delivered in a hush, and it takes Jack a moment to work out if she's actually used a word he doesn't understand in the slightest or if he just couldn't hear her.

"He what?" There isn't so much as a hint of mirth in North's voice, not a twinkle in his bright eyes. He mutters something that might be a curse. "_Mussorgsky_, does he not remember what happened last time he tried to push a dream on Pitch?"

"It's worse this time."

"_Worse_? How can it be _worse_?"

Tooth's already airborne, starting away down the hall. "Come and see."

North follows, only glancing back once to see if Jack's coming with them.

Jack pauses, for a long moment, torn between chasing after the girl who had known his name and following the people – the _Guardians_ – who for some inexplicable reason have decided to take him under their wing. In the end, it's not really much of a choice. He doesn't know anything about the girl, where she might have gone, how he might find her again. And he doesn't really feel like taking another beating. Still, he can't help but wonder if he'll ever see her again, ever find out who she is and how she knows him.

For some reason, he hopes he will.


	14. Chapter 14

Nightlight leads Katherine down a hall to one of the rooms, and hovers anxiously by the door, waving her in as he looks cautiously up and down the hall after her. For the first time since she'd met him, a faint tinge of worry colours her thoughts. How does she know that he isn't going to lead her astray? He's already led her into one battleground.

Then again, she reflects, someone she thought she should be able to trust had just tried to hurt, maybe kill, both herself and a little girl. Everything is topsy-turvy today, and perhaps if she can't trust the people she thought she could, then walking into what looks like a trap may be the safest thing she could do.

So Katherine bites her lower lip, adjusts her grip on the knife in her hand so that it sits a little more comfortably, and tiptoes cautiously forward into the dark.

At first, she sees nothing at all. Then her eyes adjust somewhat to the shadows (which are darker here than in any of the cells they passed on the way here, she notices uneasily, and which seem to shift even without a light source to affect them) and she notices something darker, lying heaped on the bed against the corner. As she watches, it shivers, shakes, throws itself up and over and –

Eyes blink open, staring right at her, gold as stars against the dark.

Katherine nearly drops the knife (and she's almost certain she _has_ dropped it, she certainly isn't holding it tightly enough for it to stay in her grip, but there it is in her shaking hand, pointing steady and sure at whatever's looking at her). She has just enough presence of mind to think that if it has eyes, it must be alive, before the eyes wink shut. The patch of deeper dark rises, narrows, looms shapelessly over her for a moment before resolving into the figure of a man. His eyes blink open again, and Katherine notices with a little thrill that the reason the gold seems so bright is because what should be the whites of his eyes are pure jet black. They stand out like two black holes from a pale and pointed face, and when he speaks his teeth look unusually jagged and sharp.

"Who are you? What do you want?"

Katherine opens her mouth, but all that comes out is a squeak. She swallows, and tries again.

"Um. Nightlight brought me here," she answers, risking a glance back towards the door where the glowing boy stands watch. "Is he – a friend of yours?" she adds, hoping against hope that the answer will be 'yes'.

The figure – the _man_ – turns and glances dismissively towards the door, a frown darkening his face for an instant, and Katherine realizes that she's never seen anyone look quite so serious, quite so _scared_. She lowers the knife to her side, with a little difficulty; it doesn't seem to want to stand down.

"It's all right," she says, and tries not to flinch when those eerie eyes fix on her again. "I'm Katherine. Who are you?"

For a moment, the stranger doesn't speak, doesn't move, still and silent as a shadow. Then his face splits into a grin, which, for all that it's full of sharp teeth, seems more sad than frightening.

"What a question to ask," he mutters, and Katherine is certain somehow that he's not speaking to her. "Pleased to meet you, Katherine. I'm -" He stops, biting off the words. "My _name _is Kozmotis."

"The general?" The moment the words cross her lips Katherine knows it was the wrong thing to say.

"How do you know -"

"My uncle's a big fan of yours," she blurts, trying to defuse the sudden tension that fills the air. She could swear the shadows all along the wall are shifting, just slightly, out of the corner of her eye. "He's always saying that a golden age of warfare ended when you resigned."

"How flattering." The frown returns, a deep v creasing Kozmotis' forehead as he scans the room, pausing just long enough to glare at the doorway and the spillover of light when Nightlight peeks around the door frame. He grins reassuringly, and then ducks back behind the door.

Katherine bites her bottom lip, debating with herself for a moment, but her curiousity, as usual, gets the better of her. Before she can think too much about it, she's already asking, "What _happened_ to you? How did you end up _here_?" The words _like this_ die on her tongue when Kozmotis turns that glare on her, but she doesn't back down.

"You don't know?" He leans a little closer to her, peering intently at her, and Katherine manages with extreme force of will not to take a step backwards. "They didn't kidnap you? Haven't tried to turn _you_ into a weapon?"

"Um," Katherine answers, intelligently. The screams outside have mostly gone silent, but for a moment she could swear they're still ringing in her head. "I thought it was just about military tech and computer programming. Until today I didn't even know that there _were_ people being used as – experiments." She swallows, hard, and has to look away. Her uncle can't have known about this. He wouldn't have let this happen. Not to the General Pitchiner he's talked about so reverently. Not to _children_. He can't have known. He _can't_.

Still, she can't meet Kozmotis' eyes.

He huffs out a sound halfway between a laugh and a sigh. "If only my daughter had been so lucky."

"Your -" Any fear of the man before her is suddenly overcome by a wave of pity. Katherine thinks again of the small girl who'd been attacked, and asks, "Is she – was she out there?"

"No. No, she wasn't." Katherine can't quite tell if the expression that flashes across his features is one of regret or relief. "I thought she must be, but – I don't know where she is." It sounds like an admission, his voice rough and wounded as though the words have been wrenched out of him against his will. "I don't know where else to look."

Katherine shakes her head, and glances back towards the door, an idea of why she has been brought here dawning on her as she meets Nightlight's eyes in a stolen glance. "You might not," she says, slowly, as the puzzle pieces fall together, "but I think I do."

There's a sharp intake of breath from Kozmotis, and the shadows around the room _jump_. "What do you mean?"

She manages to meet his eyes without flinching, and smiles. "My uncle's computer has records of every – every experiment." And he'd told her it was just a lot of data that would be meaningless to her, records and statistics and results that would help him build better nanobots the next time. With everything else that's turned out to be false, she wouldn't be surprised if the answers to every question she has now are somewhere in the system. "And I've got the pass codes."

The smile that splits Kozmotis' face is not entirely innocent. "Now I see why the glowworm brought you here. Would you -"

"You don't even have to ask." She sounds braver than she feels, but Katherine squeezes the handle of her knife a little tighter and smiles a little brighter. "Just follow me."

…

Tooth, it turns out, has exaggerated the severity of Bunny's injuries ever so slightly. By the time she, Jack, and North return, he's already on his feet, although the livid gash from his left shoulder down to his right hip still seems to be paining him. As soon as she steps through the door, Tooth is on him, throwing him back onto the metal-framed bed with a fury that Jack had thought she only showed to her enemies.

"What are you _doing_? You know you're not supposed to be up and walking around, you'll open it up again or – or jostle your organs out of place and do you even know how much can go wrong if you have your organs in the wrong place, it can cause _permanent_ damage -"

"Tooth! Calm down, Sheila, I'm _fine_," Bunny protests, and Tooth bites off a sentence mid-word, shaking her head.

"Just _what_ was so important that you had to risk your own recovery – risk your own _life_ – to get up and wander around?"

"Y'can't expect me to lie here like a damn potato while the lot of you're out hunting Pitch!" He casts a pleading look in North's direction, and when he doesn't find the sympathy he seeks, tries a different tactic. "Besides, I had ta keep an eye on Sandy."

Tooth looks like there's more she wants to say, but North cuts her tirade short. "Sandy? What is problem with -"

"He's only gotten worse," Bunny interrupts, ominously, with a wave of his head towards the corner of the room. Tooth frowns, and presses his head back against the flat pillow with a gentleness that seems at odds with her earlier fury.

"Lie _still_ and let it heal, or so help me, I _will_ tie you to the bed."

"I'd like ta see ya try."

Jack tunes out their banter, crossing the room with a skip and a jump to where the fourth Guardian is sitting against the wall, his knees drawn up to his chest. If Jack didn't know better, he'd say that Sandy looks somehow…smaller, diminished, and when Sandy looks up and meets Jack's eyes there is no hint of gold in his gaze.

"Hey," Jack says, crouching down to put himself closer to eye level with the small man. He's got no idea what Pitch has done, but it's got to be something bad. "How're you doing?"

Sandy scrutinizes Jack for a moment, and then nods once, decisively, bringing up two small hands in a flurry of signs that Jack only faintly recognizes as a language. He tilts his head to the side, watching the intricate passes and gestures, and then glances back up to Sandy, whose face falls when Jack shakes his head. "Sorry, little man, I can't understand you."

Sandy scowls, looks around briefly, and then meets Jack's eyes again. There's a flash of gold, butter-bright, and _scaredaloneloststrangeshoutsthoughts?runningscream inghelphelpalone_

For just a second, Sandy looks downright _terrified_.

Once he gets his breath back, Jack manages to dredge up a smile. "That was a little fast for me," he offers, straightening up. It felt nothing like the first time Sandy'd done – whatever it is that Sandy does. Getting into people's heads. The first time had been reasonably easy. This – this feels almost like Sandy's lost control of his power. Or like he never really knew how to control it in the first place.

"He doesn't remember anything," Bunny's saying, when Jack rejoins the Guardians across the room. "Not us, not the facility, not his training, not the first time Pitch threw a fit…nothing. It's like he's a completely different person."

A mental image, an echo of a borrowed memory, flickers across Jack's thoughts, merging with a little girl's shout, and before he knows it he's asking, "What if he is?"

The silence that follows is heavy, three pairs of eyes fixing on Jack, and he swallows nervously. "If he doesn't remember anything, if Pitch has somehow blanked him out or whatever, wouldn't that mean he'd go back to whoever he was before he was a Guardian?"

"Frost," Tooth says, and her face is full of pity as she reaches out to him, "none of us were anyone before we were Guardians."

That can't be right. Jack shakes his head, pulling away, back out of the small circle they've formed. "No, that's – that's not possible, we all had to have been _someone -_" His throat feels strangely dry, and he cuts the sentence off abruptly.

"We are Guardians," North says, and his voice is flat, final. "It is all that we have, all that we are, and all that we ever will be."

"But not all that we ever _were_," Jack argues. "I'm not – I mean, we're all grown people here, there had to have been _something_ before the arena, right?" In his mind's eye, the face of the little girl, so familiar, so damn _familiar_, grows farther and farther away the longer the silence stretches.

Bunny shakes his head. "Wishful thinking, Frost."

"No." Jack isn't sure he's even speaking until the words are out, and he hears them almost as though they're coming from someone else's mouth. "No, you're wrong. She knew my name."

"Everyone will -" Tooth starts, and Jack pulls back, stepping lightly out of the circle towards the door.

"My _real_ name. Not Frost." Something clenches painfully around his heart. "She said I was her brother."

Tooth freezes, one hand still outstretched, something like fear on her face. "That's – that can't be," she says, at last. "We don't have – _families_, we don't -"

"How do you know?" Jack asks.

Bunny rises, and this time, Tooth doesn't try to stop him. Her eyes look vaguely unfocused, and she lowers her arm slowly, as though afraid she'll shatter if she moves too quickly.

"You know, mate, this is starting to sound awfully familiar," Bunny growls, and it _is_ a growl, low and rumbling from his chest. Jack takes another step backwards defensively, and Bunny half-turns towards North, not taking his eyes from Jack's face. "Doesn't it sound just like that nonsense Pitch was trying to convince us of last time he tried this?"

Jack wants to say something, to defend himself, but his throat seems to have closed.

"Sandy -" North says, sounding uncertain, and Bunny interrupts him with another menacing growl.

"Sandy's been wrong before." There's a faint noise, like tearing silk, and Jack glances down to see that Bunny's fingers are once again claw-tipped and deadly. "And where was Frost when Pitch disappeared? Was he helping us? No. He was _nowhere_."

"Hey!" Jack protests, but the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach warns that it's already too late. Even North is shaking his head, the look on his face turning from disbelief to disappointment with every word. Jack bites his lip, and clenches both of his hands into fists. "Fine. Whatever. If you can't trust me, then I guess there's no reason for me to stick around."

He turns, half-hoping that one of them will call after him, but he hears nothing but the faintest sighs of the wind as he walks through the doorway and away down the hall. And much as he wants to, he doesn't look back.


End file.
